I had Gigafast Broadband installed in December 2018. Everything worked flawlessly up until about six weeks ago when my router started to reboot itself, occasionally at first but then constantly in phases. I had several Nest and Amazon devices connected and they soon complained when they kept losing their internet connections. I also had a Philips hue bridge, and Sky boxes connected in addition to a few computers, tablets and phones. Importantly, all my devices were the same as when Gigafast Broadband was first intalled.
About 4 weeks ago, I contacted Vodafone (VF) Tech Support and followed their standard advice, which involved connecting and disconnecting devices and changing cables. This time-consuming work made no difference. Later, I installed a new Gigafast router (with updated firmware) that VF sent me, and this made no difference. An engineer came and checked the fibre optic cable and connection, which were fine, and changed the ONT box. This made no difference; the router continued to self-boot. About two weeks ago, my fault was elevated up the tech support chain to Level 3 but I have not heard anything back from them.
Also, about two weeks ago, I finally worked out that my iPhone XS Max seemed to be the culprit. When I took my phone away from my home, the router rebooted, and when I came home with my phone the router rebooted. To be fair, VF Tech Support had advised me that there were reports of issues with Apple devices, but they had not been specific. Their advice was to update to the latest version of iOS. I did this; I updated to iOS 13.1.3. The router only stopped rebooting when I also reset the network settings on the phone. So I was happy again.
Everything was dandy up until yesterday when the router started rebooting again. I noticed that my iPad Pro (2015) had updated itself to iPadOS 13.2, and my Apple Watch 4 to WatchOS 6.1. My iPhone was unchanged, and yet on testing, it appeared to be the culprit again. I updated the iPhone to iOS 13.2 and everything is stable again – for how long, who knows!!
What I can deduct from my experience is the following:
- iOS 13 looks like it is may be causing significant issues with some Gigafast routers - others have reported similar problems on this Forum. My rebooting issue seems to have started around the same time that iOS 13 was first released in September. People who read about these things will know that iOS 13 has had lots of bugs and caused a host of problems.
- VF need to fix this issue – I’m assuming it’s a router firmware update that is required. It would be welcome, and even good practice, if VF contacted customers, who have reported issues, to acknowledge that there is an issue and it was working on a solution.
I feel I am being left in the dark.
