I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, specifically because there were too many silent missed calls. Silent meaning my device never showed I had a missed call.

This was a pattern across more than a year, spanning multiple devices (all iphones). It happens on both wifi and cellular. It happens with wifi calling enabled and disabled. It happens with people I call every day, in my address book, as well as new contacts (say someone I met who called to follow up). I called support, searched online, reset network settings multiple times at different points months apart.

After being on T-Mobile for about a year, the degraded service is about the same as Verizon. Every week, more than once, people call me, my phone never rings, and I never see a missed call on my device. It happens at home, at work, on work trips in different states.

I still get missed calls regularly and my device shows I missed the call. It seems like a certain % of callers get my VM, but I never know the call attempt happened. The missed calls never appear later on my phone (like a late VM or text deliver, coming minutes or sometimes hours after it was sent).

Hypothesis: A growing number of cellular subscribers don't care enough or use voice calls as much, so (regardless of motive/feelings) cellular providers have found they can simply reduce quality without losing customers.