Why does my phone wifi hotspot only work sometimes?

As title, I’m working from home at the mo, the house wifi is occaionally rubbish, I tried the phone hotspot the other day and worked well but not today. The internet access icon says signal strength excellent….

I get this on my Ip5, turn hotspot on/off and that sorts it for me!

Is the home issue the house wifi or the house broadband connection.

If the former get homeplug, works a treat. We are in an old stone house where wifi has no chance

Ok thanks, I’ll give that a go

does your phone provider “allow” tethering ?

maybe they’ve somehow detected that you’re running the hotspot and have knobbled the signal*

(*this may or may not be technically possible. terms & conditions apply. investments may go up, up, up, or down)

Load on towers, other uses, load on the main backbone. A slow down is hard to spot on mobile pages but much more noticeably on the pc.

Have you smashed your data allowance by using full-fat web sites over it, and now it’s in some sort of throttled mode?

Check your mobile contract, some don’t allow tethering, those that do are limited to a certain amount of data.
The phone knows whether it’s being used as a hotspot or of it’s just using data normally.

Could always buy a network cable and plug the laptop into the router of really stuck.

mattyfez – Member

Check your mobile contract, some don’t allow tethering, those that do are limited to a certain amount of data.
The phone knows whether it’s being used as a hotspot or of it’s just using data normally.

This could well be it. A lot of providers don’t like you to use your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Re the contract, I thought tethering was allowed but maybe not. Strange thing is it worked fine last week. I’ve still got 500mb left which refreshes tomorrow, interesting to see if that makes any difference. Mobile contract is EE. I’d be quite happy to use the home wifi (Talk Talk…), it works most of the time but seems to disconnect randomly, although again signal strength is allegedly always “excellent”….

We’re on Talk Talk and ours does that too.
It’s never blisteringly fast, but it’s fine for our requirements.

Every now and again though it will just cut out. Wi-Fi signal strength doesn’t change, so the devices can obviously connect to the router, but there’s just no connection to the ‘outside world’.
I am blaming the broadband supply, but I guess it could be the router?

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Yes tried on/off.
Maybe someone stole something else during the talk talk leak 🙁

So wifi is a local issue to your router and house.
What talktalk router is it? Is it all devices have issues connecting?
have you tried changing the channels, any other settings?
How far away.

As a side note. I sometimes hotspot on EE and it ALWAYS works but my contract allows tethering.