Tethering in different parts of Great Vancouver

[ALL48]

Hello,

May be someone more experienced knows the answer to the question why tethering works in one part of the Great Vancouver and does not work in another?  I routinely use (Port Coquitlam) tethering (Samsung S10e) with my laptop (System76 Lemur Pro11) and tablet Samsung S7+ using wifi and bluetooth connections without any issues. But yesterday I had to spend some time in New Westminster and to my surprise mobile hotspot did not work  - at all. In 2 hours I returned back to Port Coquitlam and was able to use tethering (the same devices) again.

I think whether or not hotspot can be activated on a user's phone is controlled by the cell tower i.e. the cell network provider (and while there are might be some exceptions for some versions of Android it almost always true for iOS).

Is Is it true or may be there is a different explanation to this strange situation? 

Thanks!

[Nezgar]

I recall a few instances where data in general just seemed to not be responding well, and toggling airplane mode on/off cleared things up.

[sheytoon]

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@ALL48 wrote:

2) >>Telus cannot control a phone's tethering ability from their cell towers.

Any cell carrier can EASILY detect tethering and make it unusable (working extremely slow / not  to work at all). I know nothing about Telus in particular, but if it was the broad statement when it was just wrong.

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Not sure why you think it's wrong. There is no way to control this from a cell tower. It might be possible from the core network, but that is nowhere near the cell tower, or it may be possible from the customized carrier software loaded onto the phone.

[softech]

@ALL48

 and one more thing,  make sure your phone is showing LTE when sharing hotspot data.  When my phone was having the problem,  it was struggling to stick with LTE, it was mostly 3G.  Bit for me, putting the sim in another phone briefly likely forced  a reprovision and I was good since

[ALL48]

@softech 

>>while what you said was true,  Telus simply does not block hotspot

Great to know, thanks.

I doubt I will go there any time soon but if I go I will grab the second phone with me just out of curiosity.

Seriously speaking I would be better off if I have with me a LTE modem allowing to connect to a particular provider/band/cell  (Quectel for example).

[gpixel]

@ALL48 

I wasn't asking if you're device was using LTE or 3g I was asking if your plan is a 3g plan or one of the newer full speed 4g plans from PM. the 3g plans(still uses LTE) can have a maximum download bandwidth of 3mbps. when I used to be on the 3g plans I would have trouble maintaining 3mbps it was more like 1.5mbps. the lower the signal on the device the worse that download/upload speed will become 

[softech]

》Any cell carrier can EASILY detect tethering and make it unusable 

@ALL48 

while what you said was true,  Telus simply does not block hotspot

again,  try what I suggested above.  It just solved my Hotspot problem hiccup last week

[ALL48]

Yes, the cell phone used both LTE and 3G ( I manually switched them, restarted the phone, switched APN - nothing helped. The plan is 50$ / 8GB, I ran Internet Radio all the time when I tried to troubleshoot the problem.

1)>> it's possible that area of new west wasn't receiving a strong enough signal

I am not sure how signal strength is related to tethering, never heard about it.

2) >>Telus cannot control a phone's tethering ability from their cell towers.

Any cell carrier can EASILY detect tethering and make it unusable (working extremely slow / not  to work at all). I know nothing about Telus in particular, but if it was the broad statement when it was just wrong.

[sheytoon]

Telus cannot control a phone's tethering ability from their cell towers.

[gpixel]

@ALL48 

was the device still able to browse the web without hotspot? it's hard to determine what the issue was without troubleshooting... it's possible that area of new west wasn't receiving a strong enough signal. is your plan on a 3g plan or a 4g plan? 

[softech]

@ALL48 generally speaking PM does not restrict hotspot sharing,  i don't have problem with different area 

Maybe try it on a different phone first with hotspot and then move it back to the original phone.  The other day I had some hotspot issue with one phone and that was resolved that way, likely because reprovision was done as I move the sim card from one phone to another