iPhone Wifi Internet problems with Hub 3

[Jobie]

I have having daily intermittent problems with my two Apple iPhones with Wifi internet and my Virgin Media Hub 3, which is rendering my home Wifi to be pretty much useless.   

The devices appear to connect to my Wifi but internet doesn’t work.  Sometimes on the iPhone WiFi settings it will say “No Internet Connection”, but not always.  However there will be no internet connection on the iPhones regardless.  

I have a wired PC, two laptops and an Android device on WiFi, and also a smart TV on the WiFi and these ALL work perfectly – the problem only appears to be with the iPhones.  (I have an old iPad Air 2 and this works fine also).

My two devices are an iPhone 11 and an iPhone SE.  Both will connect to the internet on WiFi networks outside the house (eg. My workplace) and work without any problems whatsoever.

If I do a “forget this network” and rejoin, sometimes the device will reconnect, but to be honest it is driving us crazy as my home WiFi is effectively useless and is constantly eating up mobile data. 

Doing a power off/on will sometimes resolve the problem but it is guaranteed the problem will occur again within a few hours, if not sooner.

I have tried – pin Resets, splitting the wifi Bandwidths to separate SSIDs. Static IPs, all to no avail.  I have had a Virgin engineer visit and of course his basic diagnostics found no problems.

I am at the end of my tether with this.  Is anybody able to advise?  Thanks in advance.

[John_GS]

Hi DontBFooled

What issues are you having with the iPhone please? 

Best,

[Aggster]

I found the only way to get around this is to get a third party hub. Virgin just aren’t capable of fixing the issue. Believe me having to purchase another router after the expense of getting Virgin in etc is a bitter pill to swallow, but for the relief of everything working seamlessly it’s worth the outlay. 

A good YouTube video explaining how to change the Virgin hub to modem mode is: https://youtu.be/JCn_sLrxJQk

The hub i purchased from Amazon is this one for £60: https://amzn.to/3D4J2dT

[Ilyas_Y]

Hi there @Aggster, thanks for reaching out to us and a warm welcome to the Virgin Media forums.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues with the VM hub.
Was it an intermittent Wi-Fi connection issue you'd have?
Let us know and how it is with the third party hub you have.

Kind regards.

[Aggster]

Yes it was intermittent wifi on my iPhone and other random bits of smart home kit. But Virgin know there is problems and incompatibility with iPhones. Bit naughty really giving inferior hubs to customers. Now I’ve upgraded my router to the one I posted above I’ve had no problems at all. So definitely 100% the Virgin Hub3. 

[Tom_W1]

Hi @Aggster thanks for your reply here in the Community.

Despite your concerns raised, it's great to hear that you have no further problems once you have changed Hubs.

If you do have any further concerns in the future, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Many thanks

[halltony]

I have also been seeing this issue with Hub 3 and Apple iOS devices. 

I saw a comment about child safe and remember turning that on at about the time the issues started. I’m going to try switching it off to see if there is a compatibility issue between it and iOS. 

[Matthew_ML]

Hey halltony, thank you for reaching out and I am sorry to hear you are also having some issues with Apple devices connecting.
Please can you let me know what Apple devices they are and if they are all updated to latest IOS 16.1 update?

Please can you let me know if it also gives you any type of error message at all? Thanks 

[halltony]

Devices are iPhone 12 and 13 mini and older iPad Pro. All on latest iOS version. 

I would say that the issues seem less common with the two virgin security potions disabled but we are still seeing some dripping of signal when playing streamed audio from BBC Sounds via Sonos speakers. I might try re-enabling the security options to see whether things get worse again. 

[Kath_F]

Hi halltony, 

Thanks for coming back to us. 

Please keep us posted on how things go when reenabling things. 

Many thanks, 

[halltony]

So. I haven’t re-enabled things but yesterday my wife says that the wifi yesterday on her iPhone was so bad she nearly threw the router in the bin. 
 
I see the same on my iPhone the wifi drops regularly and although 4G takes over it does impact anything being streamed.

I’m going to see whether I can get a free upgrade to a better router. If not I might just explore another ISP. I’m certainly not paying Virgin any more to get decent wifi in my home.