3G Issues on Bell Canada Network

I just checked the Bell Canada procedure for iPad.

Did you do all this already?

http://support.bell.ca/en-on/Mobility/Smartphones_and_mobile_internet/How_to_act ivate_and_manage_my_iPad_data_plan?step=2

If so, would it help to do the procedure again?

The only thing I can think of is that you make sure you are on top on your billing with your 3G plan. Are you on Pay as you go or are you on month to month? Do you pay by credit card?

Sometimes if you have issues with your credit card, the billing might not go through if you are the automatic withdrawal and while you may have a connection with Bell, you can only do minimal things like contact them for billing or technical issue. The technical people might not know about this -- this can only be sorted out by sales or billing This happened to me once with Bell Canada, but that was with voice and was their mistake eventhough they thought I was billed which it didn't. Also make sure you are not somehow blacklisted by them either.

There were issues I heard where after about 30 days when the new billing cycles end, the iPad data share plan stops working. Part of it is due to the inability for people to do self-serve top up where the safari page would no load up the top up page and part of it was data plan incompatibility.

Are you on Bell's $30 6Gb data plan with the $10 iPad share plan plus the voice plan on your wife's iphone?

@spitfire411

Here's the confusing part. You are claiming that you are on a shared data plan and yet your wife's corporate only has a 500Mb data plan. As I recall from a Bell Canada rep, any shared data plan with a smartphone (iPhone) requires a minimum of a 1Gb data plan. And in order to achieve something similar to what you thought you are getting, you need a small business account with about 1000 voice mins plus extra $30 gets you a 6Gb data plan and plus $10 additional share plan to share the data plan with your tablet (that was when the 1st iPad came out -- they lowered the restrictions somewhat since then). I had to upgrade to this plan in order to get sharing and tethering to work properly. The monthly flex plan you mentioned is I believe an independent plan by itself and should not be tied with your wife's corporate plan. Perhaps they may have made a mistake and tagged your tablet's plan as a shared data plan with a smartphone, but since it's only a 500Mb data plan, the system probably refused to allow sharing because of its failure to meet the minimum 1Gb data plan for smartphones that's required. Unless Bell had changed this requirement recently?!?

Bell's Corporate EPP plan is not the same as a small or business plan because some people can get it through say BCAA (then) or Costco or an employee working for a company, so sometimes Bell people confused what's possible in a business plan that is not available on a corporate plan and I suspect this may explain why you lost access after the 1st billing cycle.

To give you an idea, minimal browsing and email and social networking can consume about 1Gb/month with an iPad. Any minimal Youtube streaming and Shoutcast or Tunein Radio usage on top of what you are doing, you will need a minimum of about 3Gb/month. Yes, a tablet can suck bandwidth much more than an iPhone which probably explains why Bell wants you to have a minimum 1Gb data plan so if you plan to tether an iPad to an iPhone, you are not going to get any surprises with a 1Gb data plan as opposed to a 500Mb plan. So unless you have a large data plan (5Gb or higher), you should keep your smartphone and tablet plans separate.

Good luck in your progress with Bell and let us know what you found.

When you connect to Bell's network, what symbols do you see on the left side in the status bar on your iPad?

Could it be that they are refusing the connection because you have already reached the download limit of your data plan? Check also "Usage" in your iPad.

Can you somehow review your account in detail (connection times, downloads/uploads, etc.) on Bell's website?

Perhaps they made a mistake?

@spitfire411

Sometimes with corporate plans, having another plan attached to it can be constituted as being a shared plan and I find sometimes that Bell in particular can sometimes mix things up, which is apparent when you first applied, especially with a Corporate EPP plan which yours is through an association. I used to have a Corporate EPP plan myself through BCAA which they then dissolved and was having problems with a similar data sharing issue when the iPad came to exist last year.

However, you may be able to upgrade your wife's data plan from 500Mb (I assume she's paying $25/month now) to a $30 6 Gb data plan which is still on promotion for the small business plan; which is only $5 more. It's on till May 2nd (Canadian election day!). Talk to them and ask for a retention plan for your wife's corporate plan, which this is. If you need the retention code, it is RPPA30. They might initially refuse to do this, but since you're planning to jump ship anyhow and having nothing but problems, tell them so. Once you are upgraded to a 6Gb plan, ask for a $10 data sharing plan (some Corp plan might put you into a Pay Per Use plan when you're on the 6Gb data planI heard) and hopefully that should get you going! I personally have no problems with Bell 3G at all with all my iOS devices once you have the proper plan, especially the 6Gb data plan! Bell can sometimes be a pain to deal with.

Good luck!

The plot thickens!

Can you see Bell's IP address when you're connected?

I'm not sure right now whether it can be found in the cellular data or whether you need an app.

If you need an app to see the IP address, I'm using System Status from Jiri Techet for that, which costs about 2 US$.

Once you know the IP address, you could give Bell a call and ask them to monitor that IP address to see whether they can detect any problem there.

Spitfire411,

My problem was no service sign showing on the top when I had an individual tablet plan with them on the same bill after the 1st billing cycle. They also changed the SIM to no effect as well. At the same time last year during the iPhone 4 launch, Bell introduced a 6Gb data plan for smartphones with a $10 data share plan for iPad. I really don't know if this fixed my problem, but it was certainly cheaper than 2 individual plans so I went for it, plus once they switched me over, strangely enough I got my 3G signal back and data started to flow. In my case, I managed to kill 2 birds with one stone. Not sure if this applies to you though, but I simply find Bell's customer service sometimes inconsistent.