4G MINI HUB CONNECTION ISSUES

[Loobylu28]

I have had a 4G mini hub for about a month as normal Broadband was giving us 1mbps and unusable.  We are now paying £55 a month for supposedly up to 30mbps.

Apparently the mini hub can have 20 devices attached to it and still work - it is struggling with having 2 laptops attached.  As soon as the second laptop logs on, the first one crashes.  Any ideas why this would be happening?  Not ideal when I use Skype for all my work phone calls.

Apart from this it's constantly dropping on and off the internet - if I tether my laptop  off my 4G BT phone there are no issues at all and even though a speed test says it's slower, it actually seems faster and more reliable.  I have spoken to BT today who say a mast is down in the area.  I don't understand why tethering to my phone still works fine with the mast down when the 4G hub can't cope.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[DavidM]

Hi @Loobylu28 and thanks for posting.

I'm sorry you're having problems with your connection. The 4G mini hub would usually only be used when there is a delay in getting you connected or possibly a fault. Do you have another hub you can use? Did you receive one as part of your order?

Cheers

David

[Loobylu28]

Hi David

Actually it's not a mini hub (I was wrong) - it's a 4G home hub.  This is apparently a newish thing since the end of last year for us who don't have access to a good enough broadband line.  It should be able to support 62 devices attached to it and relies on 4G signal.  We have swapped to this instead of broadband via the phone line as that was absolutely dead slow, we couldn't do video calls at all.  The link is attached: https://www.bt.com/broadband/4g-hub

It's not been too bad so far although over Christmas we weren't both working at home so only now testing it out properly.  The part I don't understand is why when I'm tethered to my phone 4G via BT mobile - ie presumably the same masts - this doesn't drop out but the 4G home hub does lose signal.

Thanks

[Aupitslev]

HI David

I am also having issues with the BT minihub.

4G on my mobile in my area (trying multiple locations in the house) gets 13/14mb. On 02. My partner also gets similar on Vodafone. Yet through the minihub we have been given we get max 1mb. We have obviously tried resetting, switch on and off etc and it is no better. After rebooting the signal lights do not stay on, they just turn off after 30 secs or so, is this supposed to happen? (Nobody on the BT help seems to know whether they should be on or off when we call!). The only light that stays on is the battery light.

This is the 2nd minihub we have been given, we have already sent back the first one for the same reason! If we can only get 1mb then we will stop paying for halo.

Hope you can help

Thanks

[Les-Gibson]

@Aupitslev 

Have you had confirmation from BT (a text or email) to say that your hub has been activated?

They're only issued when there is some sort of problem and have to be activated before you can use them, they are then de-activated once the problem has been resolved

[Aupitslev]

Hi Les

There is a delay in transferring us over to BT, so they issued us the mini-hub as a gap filler. No faults on the wifi as such, we just dont have it yet. If it was a case of the mini-hub not being activated, wouldn’t it not work at all? It does, but very weakly.

i don’t understand how phones on the same data signal are so much better

[ctrlz]

Are the laptops using a VPN at all? They can have some compatibility issues with the 4g hubs, so if you are using a VPN it would be worth testing without that.

Also if using any external equipment connected to it (wifi extenders, powerline adaptors etc.) try disconnecting those and re-testing. They are primarily designed for fixed-line broadband hubs and the technology is a little different with the 4g hubs.

Hope this helps.

[Les-Gibson]

Sorry I don't know anymore than I've already posted. I do have a 4G modem myself but the problem was resolved before I received it and I have never used it

[Loobylu28]

Thanks for your replies.  We had just two laptops connected to the mini hub - absolutely nothing else otherwise the laptops would crash (ie not even our phones were connected). 

Luckily in February Fibre broadband became available so we have got that now - getting about 500 mbps which is amazing.   It's not perfect (eg massive issues today with it), but 100 times better than the mini hub which unbelievably cost more or less the same price!!  BT should be discounting that mini hub massively - it's not anywhere near the speed you should expect.