Personal hotspot down for ALL iPhones on AT&T

[alocalbiz]

As of monday evening personal hotspot on iOS devices started to fail all over the US.

Tuesday (yesterday) I began the Apple store / AT&T store dance. At first neither store acknowledged the problem. After 4 round trips between stores apple replaced the 4s which did not fix the problem.

Last trip to AT&T and they did an in store assay and found that all store demo units with PH were also failing plus all instore reps who had iPhones with PH.

A search shows this problem occurring all across the country.

2 problems: after updating to iOS 6
First: users loose the personal hotspot switch in settings and are asked to call AT&T to get it back after a network reset.

Second: now that the switch is available...turning it to on claims it makes the phone discoverable but it doesnt broadcast its SID and you cant hard code a connection either.

The fallback was always tethering with a cable but now network settings claims no cable or phone is not responding even though iTunes sees the phone (sync, backup, restore etc). And of course bluetooth sharing is broke too.

As of this post Apple support claims they dont know what the problem is. AT&T claims they are aware of it, still think its an OS problem but not sure.

Coincidence: AT&T made a change monday night to allow facetime over cellular for all plans and immediately personal hotspot breaks on ALL iPhones.

 

[digitalfx]

Coincidence: AT&T made a change monday night to allow facetime over cellular for all plans and immediately personal hotspot breaks on ALL iPhones.

not true, none of my phones have this available (all Grandfathered unlimited)

 

[gotluck]

for what it's worth...

I'm on Straight Talk - with an AT&T SIM, so it's AT&T's network

My jailbroken iPhone 4 (iOS 5.1.1) with tetherme (a tweak that enables the phone's native hotspot feature) can tether normally.

Edit: Ah, fair enough - didn't see you were referring to iOS6 explicitly.

 

[LSUstang05]

Just tested this out. I'm on iOS 6.0.1 on a MobileShare plan and mine is working just fine. Might be your area, OP.

 

[Comeagain?]

"ALL iPhones" is a bit of a stretch. I'm using it right now.

 

[SCIONTX]

Just tested this out. I'm on iOS 6.0.1 on a MobileShare plan and mine is working just fine...

Same here. Works for me.

 

[Beelzbub]

Mine is working; I am just outside of Indy.

This happened back in the middle of October. I contacted my AT&T sales rep when it happened because I was not able to use my hotspot at all and he told me that Illinois, Indiana, New York and New Jersey and parts of Iowa were affected by this and AT&T was working on it. By the end of the day they had fixed it.

I am willing to bet based on what you are saying that something similar is going on and it will be fixed. It is a pain I know, because when it happened to me I restored my phone as new thinking it was my phone, turned out it wasn’t.

 

[alocalbiz]

Update: fixed finally by AT&T

Just got a callback from AT&T support. Had to reset network settings on my iPhone to complete the fix...but now it is back working again.

@digitalfx you had to have paid extra (the 5Gig pro data plan) to get the personal hotspot on your iphone in the first place.

@LSUstang05 sorry I wasn't clear. Only affected non-mobileShare personal hotspot users.

@Comeagain? That's what I was told at the AT&T store and they took me around to all their provisioned iPhones and showed me that was indeed the case. Like I said...a search showed this happening across the US...not just in this region.