Verizon iphone 5 Personal Hotspot - Verizon's or Apple's Issue ??

I will admit that intermittently I experience issues setting up a hotspot as well. I believe it to be an issue with apple/iOS not so much verizon.

What I find to help is to shut off personal hotspot, turn off wifi (on iphone and target device(s)) then turn wifi on (on iPhone) then turn on personal hotspot then turn on wifi on target device(s) and the personal hotspot will typically show up at that point.

Out of range? How far do you seperate your devices? I usually stay in the same room and never have issues.

That isn't exactly how it designed to worked. I would recommend that you only enable the hotspot for times you know you'll be staying in range. The person hotspot isn't intended to work over large distances.

What exactly do you use it for? Does your wife use a device without cellular data.

manueltech,

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517

no think about it who do you pay for the service apple or verizon who gets the money gets the problem

OK, so I misunderstood that your wife was who was using the ipod and ipad.

Let me try to elaborate how personal hotspot was designed to be used. It was meant to be used in a small area, not an area over probably 20-30 feet (between devices). This service is meant for somebody who has a phone capable of sharing its cellular connection with their own wifi devices for use in the immediate vicinity of their phone.

I would STRONGLY suggest that if your wife/your devices are not going to stay in range then turn off personal hotspot. Personal hotspot is designed to automatically turn off whenever it is no longer being used. So when I earlier said I believe it is an apple/iOS issue I meant it. In order to better preserve your battery the personal hotspot feature will disconnect when either no devices are connected or no data usage has happened in a given time period. So when your wife/your devices leave the range of your personal hotspot your iPhone's software is essentially disabling it.

So long story short, keep your devices close, or turn off the hotspot when they wont be near. Once you know they'll be in range turn personal hotspot back on.

Does this clear things up?

I just switched over from Android (HTC Thunderbolt) and have been using mobile hot spot forever. Personal Hotspot on iOS is AWEFUL! Does not show up for eternity. Turn off/on repeatedly, turn off wifi on rMBP over and over and finally if I'm lucky can get it to connect. This issue needs to be fixed ASAP; pointless for me to pay $30 a month for unlimited MHS to VZW if I can't use the connectivity. What is the reasoning for requiring Wifi/Bluetooth and USB tethering?? I did not have to enable any of the above for using my prior hotspot; it just worked and advertised as a WAP. Lack of configuration options is also disturbing (no control over how many devices or which devices (mac filtering) can access the personal hotspot.

I'm having similiar issues. My biggest problem is that sometimes my macbook pro will find my iphone 5 right away but usually takes a really long time to find it. I've tried turning the personal hotspot on my phone off then back on again but it doesn't make much of a difference. I understand that the hotspot will turn off on the phone if out of range or not used for a while but my problem is that my computer will not find my iPhone 5 as a network to connect to for a long period of time once hotspot is turned on. I can connect through bluetooth without any problems and use the internet this way. I don't think it's a problem with your phone carrier, I think it's some sort of a software problem with the hotspot taking a long time to actually turn on once manually switched on. I could be wrong but I'm just guessing.

I'm having similar issues with my iPhone 5 hotspot. When using the wireless on my PC, the hotspot does not appear in the list of available networks. This started when I upgraded to ios6, before that the iPhone connection was only slow to appear. Now with ios6, the connection sometimes appears after 10 or so minutes or sometimes not at all. I have the same issue trying to connect to the phones hotspot using my iPad3. The solution I found is to activate the hotspot on my iPhone and then go to the Wi-Fi menu on the iPad and select 'other' under 'Choose a Network'. I then key in my iPhone network name, security type and password. The iPad connects immediately and the PC connects within a couple of seconds. So far this has been consistant. Seems to be some issue in the wi-fi discovery process. Don't know if manually keying the wi-fi info into other devices would work, I don't have that option on my PC wireless device. Hope this helps.