personal hotspot

[chrisgri_584538]

I have an iphone and when I attempt to set up my personal hotspot, I get a notification telling me to "enable personal hotspot on this account, contact Three". I tried the Three customer service number but it would not connect me. I went into the local Three shop today, and they told me they cannot offer any support/advice, and that I should contact Smarty but I cannot see how. Everything seems to be done in articles, which I cannot find anything relating to this. I have never had this problem with other networks/phones. Unless I can resolve this, it looks like I'll be switching networks again. any help appreciated

[MSF]

@chrisgri_584538 I often use my iPhone as a hotspot on Smarty without any issue, so I wonder if you need to check the phone settings carefully. Apple website rather than Three may be the way.

The reason that Three is mentioned is because Smarty runs on that network, but as you have found, Three will not assist.

[chrisgri_584538]

I have been on the apple website and I am being told that I have to contact my provider to enable the hotspot. And for days I have been in contact with one of the support staff here but still not able to get an answer on how to resolve this. 

[MSF]

@chrisgri_584538  Ichave never contacted the provider (Smarty) in order to get to my hotspot. I cannot see why because it is a setting of your phone and not their sim.

In Settings>Personal Hotspot make sure it is  set to Allow others to join if you want other people to have access. You will also need to have both the phone and the device signed in to the same Apple ID for the device to be able to pick up the hotspot.

It really does work. The other day, my broadband played up during a big Zoom meeting and so I went onto mobile data with no problem - simply changed the wifi source on the computer (I am already signed in with my Apple ID).

[Rebekah_150]

hey, I am sorry you have been having issues, we are a digital first network so our customer services is over chat https://smarty.co.uk/contact available daily from 8am – 8pm.

[RaymondP]

 Same problem here. I was able to use the Hotspot facility on a trip across Europe in November without any problem. Now it seems that Three might have restricted my access. 

[MSF]

@RaymondP I have just checked on an iPhone and not had any problem closing my broadband connection and putting my computer onto the hotspot - I have also not had to contact Three for any purpose to do this, either now or in the past.

[WelshPaul]

I have an iPhone 14 Pro and the hotspot feature has always worked for me. Going by the pop notice you posted, I would guess that the mobile hotspot feature hasn’t been enabled on your SMARTY account. Speak to SMARTY using their online chat service and ask them to confirm there is no account restriction in place.

[WelshPaul]

I found this:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6489878/smarty-three-blocking-tethering

It could be the result of the recent country wide outage THREE customers experienced. Maybe THREE screwed up some customers backend account settings when implementing a fix or restoring data.