WiFi - Can't register vehicle with AT&T

[Snakebitten]

I posted when I was able to do it once my trial ran out -- seems I got it locked in in sept. I try to tell everyone about it. ATT has both directly and indirectly gotten billions of taxpayer money. Last thing I want is for someone to over pay them $$$.

I'm trying to get it even cheaper as I have multiple vehicles and can only drive one at a time.

This is how it shows up

I was just messing with you.
$200 annually VS $180
I'm just going to have to eat that 20 bucks the first year.

I live off the beaten path and can't stomach the lag for satellite internet. So I'm all cellular and often exceed 100Gig monthly because of all the grandkids streaming.

I personally do most of my work related stuff via remote desktop, so I wouldn't need the multidevice "unlimited" plan, but AT&T caps me at 40gigs tethering, per device, and I have one Android phone as a dedicated USB gateway on an Asus WRT router.

Anyways, I'm very happy with the performance of the trucks Hotspot in my part of the country. So in a pinch, it's a nice office backup just in case. A no-load Powerboost parked outside the RV would be provide services for many hours while barely sipping fuel.

Remarkable platform for my lifestyle

Sponsored

 

[fwunder]

I hear you! Seems to me they should just swap it out ( TCU ) and let the bench guys play with it. Seems like a waste of shop time to try an trouble shoot a modem.

 

[HammaMan]

I hear you! Seems to me they should just swap it out ( TCU ) and let the bench guys play with it. Seems like a waste of shop time to try an trouble shoot a modem.

No, they just need to re-provision it. It's not broke

 

[HammaMan]

Anyways, I'm very happy with the performance of the trucks Hotspot in my part of the country. So in a pinch, it's a nice office backup just in case. A no-load Powerboost parked outside the RV would be provide services for many hours while barely sipping fuel.

Remarkable platform for my lifestyle

My phone has a 1GB data plan w/ free rollover ($15/mo, 2x vehicles w/ $15 unlimited = $45 OTD for cellular and 2 unlimited vehicles). I've got probably 30GB of data on it stacked up. Between my locations all having internet and the vehicles w/ unlimited, the phone doesn't use any data.

I have google voice installed on many devices and that's free VOIP. In all I have 4 or 5 lines. I rarely use voice on googlevoice, it's just a convenient means of texting data to phones from PCs.

 

[Snakebitten]

What are the chances that what AT&T designates as my "Continental TCU" is actually a Continental TCU?

And yes, it's THAT Continental company. They have a tire division.

 

[HammaMan]

Zero -- the issue is that it's ford's TCU and they have it active. Now when a new ford vehicle drops with a 5G TCU I'm going to attempt to install it.

 

[powerboatr]

i doubled checked my plan its unlimited and it just has a blue line where data is to be now
200 for unlimited a year imo is a fair price
i use it 100% of time truck is running,

 

[SCTYDOG]

@Snakebitten so the wifi will stay running continuously even when running the truck only as a generator all day? I go out to Tishomingo,OK frequently with my family and my poor cell phone always becomes the community hotspot for everyone and the smart TV. If I could leave the truck in Gen mode and provide wifi for the family that would be a big plus for me and I could keep my phone with me and not in the trailer.

 

[Snakebitten]

You don't need Gen mode even, although there's nothing wrong with enabling the generator even if you aren't going to draw from it.

You do have to address the feature (disable) that limits the engine to 30 minutes idling though.

Depending on the weather, you want to turn everything off in the truck, including climate control, in order to extend the amount of time between ice events. However, if it was really hot outside, I'd probably leave the HVAC system on, but set just to keep the interior from cooking. I'd also put a sunscreen in the windshield.

Regardless, even sitting IN the truck in Texas summers, if I found some shade and had the interior cooled to 68-70F, I could get 20 minutes between ICE events.
Without those fans running to draw air through the condenser, the HV battery extends the time between ICE recharge even more.

Remarkable vehicle in so many ways beyond just the moniker of "Hybrid".

 

[fwunder]

The great (dis)connection adventure continues...

It seem there are multiple threads concerning connectivity issues in the 2023 Lightning forums.

Filtering through all the "solutions" I chose to try pulling fuse 32 in the passenger side fuse box for a minute or so. Seems a bit odd, as it is labeled "Audio control module". Figured it would be easy enough to try and better than removing negative terminal on battery terminal.

Well, it brought the TCU back to life! FordPass working as expected and truck appears to be phoning home. Interesting!

OK, so that got me back to where I was before AT&T foobarred connectivity.

It didn't, however, solve the problem which I started this thread. I still cannot access AT&T MyVehicle dashboard, have WiFi but no internet access and AT&T rep cannot seem to know how to convert the trial account to a paid account. Once again, I have been "escalated" and am awaiting call for "senior technician". Arghhhhhh!!

 

[Henfield]

I let the wife blow through the 2 or 3 gig of data when we were doing a970 mile in a day drive. Then told her to use her office phone wifi hotspot. Worked perfectly.

EXCEPT, she keeps dropping the dang mouse when ever its rested on the door .. I need a mouse cage.......

 

[Micro Man]

how do you stay connected to the wifi with CarPlay connected

 

[fwunder]

Chapter 4!

So a "senior tech" actually called.

Within 5 minutes she provisioned the modem, took my $200.00 for a year's worth of access and had me back online. I did ask and got a free month as aggravation surcharge.

But....she could not register my account with the MyVehicle site for some reason which she could not explain but promised to "escalate" the problem!! LOL

It's working for the moment so that's progress!

P.S. My motivation for wanting this plan is we ( wife and me ) have a very inexpensive AT&T shared data plan. We are retired, but travel a lot camping in our little trailer. I have been carrying a small generator and a dedicated older phone with an unlimited data plan [ Visible ] which has been our hotspot while traveling or camping. The truck WiFi just makes much more sense both economically and technically for us - not to mention the generator. Some of you may remember, "Now you know the rest of the story."

 

[fwunder]

how do you stay connected to the wifi with CarPlay connected

Use the USB C cable connection in front. It's data as well as charge.

 

[astrand1]

The TCU is the com hub of the truck. It's a dual antenna (read dual band) 4G cellular modem that's always on. Ford pays ATT for the device to be always active. It's how updates are pushed to the truck, and your telemetry data taken by ford for diagnostics and improvement. What you're paying for is the 'hotspot' feature to be active.

I don't suggest anyone to try and tie to to your other ATT services. You can get fully unlimited data for $15/mo, no contract, in perpetuity by simply talking to ATT rep and just auto bill it to a CC. Complain about the price and how you never use it, but it might occasionally be handy and the $15 price will appear. They'll try and throw in additional things and you're just not interested. I've got this on 2 different fords for $15. It's worth it as the antennas are better positioned and far more powerful than your phone's (your phone's antennas actually eat more power than the amps feed them). This enables you to have wifi VOIP calling via the vehicle when plugged in (and you drop cell service) if your phone doesn't support dual concurrent wifi connections as you need 1 to talk to the TCU and the other to talk to the wireless carplay / AA. If you have single band operation and want to switch to wired mode, plug in phone and turn off wifi, it will then use USB connection. Turn on wifi and then the phone should connect to the TCU's wifi.

There's no data limits and they can't show you data used because it doesn't separate ford's data and yours. Speed tests regularly show ~50Mb down and ~30 up. Given that the TCU is a separate and always-on device, I'm looking for a way to get it to continually turn on the hotspot.

I’m pretty close. They offered me $16.66 which works out to $200 a year. I thought that was fairly reasonable.

Sponsored