Hotspot with new Three plan not working

[Jonathan_18152]

Has anyone had this issue?

Ever since switching to a new Three plan (unlimited pre pay) I've not been able to use a hotspot on my iPhone. I tap 'enable personal hotspot' and a pop up says 'To enable personal hotspot on this account, contact 3 Ireland'. 

So obviously I contact 3 support and they are extremely unhelpful. Telling me I have to contact Apple and that they can't help with phone issues. I explained that my phone and Apple support pages are literally telling me to go to my provider, and he said 'I understand sir but you need to contact Apple or go on Google or Youtube to find an answer'... there was a lot of back and forth as I tried to reason with the support agent, but he just kept saying he can't help even though my phone is prompting me to contact 3.

Insane. Anyway, hoping someone knows a way around this?

[Three_Stacey]

Hi @Jonathan_18152 I can understand your frustration with this but hotspot/tethering is a phone feature and not a network feature. This means we can't promise you that it will work.  Once we've confirmed that your mobile data is working we'd direct you to the manufacturer because we do not have any access to alter phone features. 

[Jonathan_18152]

I can understand if it's a problem with my phone, but my phone is prompting
me to speak to my provider, so I'm not really sure who is correct here? If
neither company wants to help me then I'm not sure what else I can do.

What I do know is: my phone had a hotspot working perfectly fine on my old
plan and when I used a SIM in another country last month. It's only my
Three SIM now that is having issues, which tells me it is not my phone, it
is Three.

[Three_Stacey]

@Jonathan_18152 I can understand your confusion, especially with the error that you are getting. The service Three provides is the data, is this service working for you? Are you able to use the apps on your phone or Safari? As the hotspot is a phone feature and not a network service we are unable to troubleshoot it further.

But I would be happy to take a look at your account and ensure that everything is set up as it should be in the background. To do this you'll need to PM me your name, number, address and date of birth. You'll need to increase your rank to send PMs. You can increase your rank by commenting on posts, creating new posts, kudos or liking comments. Once you rank up you'll get a message to notify you & you'll need to log out & back into the Community & you'll be able to PM us directly.

[Milena_08282]

We’re you able to fix it? My hotspot was working perfectly fine until I went to a different country and used a different SIM for 2 weeks. But once I came back and went back to using my 3SIM card, the hotspot stopped working and it’s telling me the same thing, to contact Three. 

[Three_Niall]

Hey @Milena_08282, Welcome to the 3Community 🙂

I'd love to help you with this, unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to use the hotspot while you were abroad however as you were using a different sim card in the device you may need to refresh your APN settings to be able to access Hotspot back on the Three Ireland SIM.

Can you try the following for me please and then restart your phone : 

Select Settings 
Mobile Data 
Mobile Data Network 
Scroll down and select Reset Settings

[Carolina_73382]

I’m having the same issue of not being able to set up a personal hotspot. I just called to your customer support and they advised me that it is one of your policies to not enable users to hotspot the internet. I’m with Three for 2 years and I never heard about this, I used to use the hotspot a lot during 2022 and had never had a problem. How come now you’re telling me that you don’t allow this anymore? I have the same phone (iPhone), the same SIM, plan, what has it changed? If I pay the internet on my phone I should be able to do whatever I wish with it! 
this is wrong! 

[Oleh_Pavlenko]

Hello. Guys, I found a problem from 3. They apparently change the Internet settings after a trip abroad. After resetting the settings, nothing changes. 

Change the settings as in the screenshot

[Three_Niall]

Hey @Carolina_73382, Welcome to the 3Community 🙂

I'd be happy to clear this up for you, as a Personal Hotspot is a device feature it isn't a service that we provide. This a feature that comes with the iPhone, similar to iMessage, and this isn't something as a network we can turn off or block. As this is a device feature it may take some troubleshooting to get this back up and running and I'll be happy to help you here. 

@Oleh_Pavlenko thanks for you message, can I confirm has this worked for you or are you facing a similar issue to Carolina?  

[Oleh_Pavlenko]

Yes, I had the same problem when I returned from the border. I was getting the message "To enable personal hotspot on this account, please contact 3 Ireland" when I tried to turn on the hotspot. But after changing the settings everything worked