Xperia Z won't connect to Three 3G

thewhitepele

Gonna stick this here and see if any of you guys can help me.

About 2 months ago I changed over to 3 from Vodafone. I kept my Vodafone Sony Xperia Z handset on Android and just set up an APN for the mobile internet. It was working fine until 3 days ago when the phone stopped going on to 3G.

I've tried everything from manually choosing the 3G (it won't let me), to changing the APN settings slightly and I've even restored the phone to factory settings but nothing has worked. It's just stuck on the 2G network.

It's not that I'm out of 3G coverage either, I'm in areas where I was getting perfect coverage before, and I am picking up the 3G it just won't let me register on it.

Any ideas of how to get it to go back to using 3G?

Thanks.

J_E

Have you got the right APN address? What is yours set to at the moment?

thewhitepele

Cydoniac wrote: »

Have you got the right APN address? What is yours set to at the moment?

I've tried a few different ones. The one I have at the moment is;

APN Details:
Name: 3
APN: 3ireland.ie
Proxy: Not Set
Port: Not Set
Username: Not Set
Password: Not Set
Server: Not Set
MMSC: http://mms.um.3ireland.ie:10021/mmsc
MMS Proxy: mms.3ireland.ie
MMS Port: 8799
MCC: 272
MNC: 05
Anthentication Type: None
APN Type: default,mms,supl

The internet on 2G is working with it but it still won't go to 3G at all.

ongarite

Are you sure that the Three phone mast in your area hasn't gone down because of the storms over Christmas?
Three don't have a 2G network and fall back onto Vodafone for 2G, edge internet.

thewhitepele

ongarite wrote: »

Are you sure that the Three phone mast in your area hasn't gone down because of the storms over Christmas?
Three don't have a 2G network and fall back onto Vodafone for 2G, edge internet.

Yeah I've rang them and checked, plus I can find the 3G with a network search but it won't register on it when I choose it.

PTraverse

Hi thewhitepele,

did you get the problem sorted that time? A friend of mine seems to have the same problem (well almost... - Xperia U the handset & Three the mobile network involved). 3G network signal is good with Three, SIM even picks Three's 3G network fine in a different handset in the same location. But when put back in the Xperia, it finds both 2G and 3G network of Three when searching for networks manually, yet it will only register with 2G. The network mode in the handset may be set to WCDMA preferred or WCDMA only but it won't make a difference (only just knocks it off 2G as well).

Do you still remember your solution to this? Thanks a million.

thewhitepele

PTraverse wrote: »

Hi thewhitepele,

did you get the problem sorted that time? A friend of mine seems to have the same problem (well almost... - Xperia U the handset & Three the mobile network involved). 3G network signal is good with Three, SIM even picks Three's 3G network fine in a different handset in the same location. But when put back in the Xperia, it finds both 2G and 3G network of Three when searching for networks manually, yet it will only register with 2G. The network mode in the handset may be set to WCDMA preferred or WCDMA only but it won't make a difference (only just knocks it off 2G as well).

Do you still remember your solution to this? Thanks a million.

I ended up brining the handset back to the Vodafone shop I bought it from as it was still under warranty there. They sent it away to be fixed but I was sent back a brand new handset so evidently they couldn't figure out what the problem was either, or else it wasn't fixable. Never had a problem with the replacement handset even after getting it unlocked again. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

PTraverse

thewhitepele wrote: »

I ended up brining the handset back to the Vodafone shop I bought it from as it was still under warranty there. They sent it away to be fixed but I was sent back a brand new handset so evidently they couldn't figure out what the problem was either, or else it wasn't fixable. Never had a problem with the replacement handset even after getting it unlocked again. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Thanks for your quick reply, thewhitepele. We actually got it sorted this time. My friend called Three customer service again the next day and this time the agent advised him just to create a new APN profile in which all fields should be left blank except for Name and the APN (which is 3ireland.ie in this case). Then select the new APN as the one in use. To his and especially my big surprise, that seems to have sorted the problem. It doesn't make much sense to me how or why APN profile could affect connectivity to WCDMA/3G network (and not affect connectivity to GSM/2G) but it just does somehow. It's also strange that other profiles which had been set in the phone before also used the same APN (3ireland.ie) yet somehow they prevented the phone to register on 3G network. It must have had something to do with the other APN settings in the previous profiles (MNC/APN type perhaps?) which remained blank in the newly created profile. I'd need the phone for testing to try to isolate the particular settings but it's not mine and I don't have access to it. My friend is now happy it's working and doesn't want me to mess with it again So we'll leave it as it is, the problem is sorted even though not fully explained.
Once again thanks for your reply and effort to help.