iPhone 7 plus Could not activate mobile data network

[oliverl]

Hi,

Does anyone else have a problem where instead of seamlessly switching from 4g down to 3g, their iPhone 7 plus displays an error message 'Could not activate mobile data network' followed swiftly by the phone switching to 3g?

Note, 99.9% of the time the data connection is fine. This isn't an 'I can't connect to data' issue. This is a when my phone switches from 4g down to 3g I get an error message pop up issue.

Have installed the latest 10.0.3 update, to no avail. It's very annoying. I've noticed also that long the stretch of M4 I drive, that 4G data is much poorer on my iphone 7 plus than it used to be on my iphone 6. Drops down to 3G all too readily whereas it used to be solid 4G all the way from Swindon to Bath.

Any tips/pointers/knowledge I'm not the only one would be appreciated!

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi,

When I used the iPhone 6 Plus it would seamlessly switch from 4G to 3G and vice versa. 

It maybe beneficial to have your sim replaced at any Vodafone Highstreet Store via a sim swap to see if that helps. 

Also any Apple Store Geniusbar can run a diagnostic on the iPhone. 

[oliverl]

Yes I will head to an Apple Store at some point thanks. Will see if it's just my set up first before doing so though. If there's more people out there with the same problem it could point to a software issue that Apple might then fix as opposed to being a hardware issue. The SIM itself is quite new - I got it in March this year, so unlikely to be that. Oh and I've done a network setting reset too. No luck.

[Retired-LouiseE]

Hello @oliverl

This sounds very odd. 

As @BandOfBrothers suggested, the best way forward would be to pop into a Vodafone store and ask for a SIM swap and perhaps contact Apple directly to see if this is a known issue with the device. 

Please let us know how you get on. 

Louise