Fibre broadband prevents downloading apps from Google Play

[cakemonitor]

Hi,

A few months ago I switched my fibre broadband connection from BT to Vodafone. Since the switch almost everything has worked fine and the connection has been really good - except I cannot download or update any apps on my Android phone via Google Play using this connection. They either get stuck on 'pending' or it states they have started the download phase but the download never progresses or completes. However, If I disable WiFi on my phone then I can download and update from Google Play just fine over 4G. Also if I try from work or a friend's house it works fine over the WiFi connection, and furthermore, if I use a VPN on my phone I can download and update apps just fine from my home WiFi. It also worked without issue the whole time I was with BT broadband.  The only time it fails is specifically if my phone is routed onto the internet via my Vodafone fibre broadband connection.

I considered that maybe the IP address which has been dynamically assigned to my router was previously used by someone who did something to get blocked by Google, so I logged in to the router control panel and I went to Status & Support -> Reconnect and pressed the 'Reconnect' button and verified that a new IPv4 address was issued to the router. However my phone still cannot download apps or app updates via Google Play from my home broadband.

I have just run a test from my phone at speedtest.net and it reports 16ms ping and 75.5Mbps download speed.

As said above, it's not a general issue with my phone settings or Google account because it works via every other internet connection that I have been able to try. The problem exclusively occurs when connecting via my home broadband.

How can I fix my home broadband so that I can download and update Android apps?

Thanks in advice for any help.

[Laurienamber]

OK, it's been a few days now, and apart from a brief period the next day when it didn't work again, (when I posted in here) the static IP solution does seem to have fixed the issue for us. Don't know or understand why, but might be worth a try! Twitter customer service sorted it for us at no charge. 

[egb92]

Thanks for the update. I got a static IP from the Vodafone online chat team shortly after my message and it immediately solved the issue. Hasn't repeated yet.l so fingers crossed it will be fine now.  Obviously some network issue with Vodafone. I hope they are aware of it. 

[JohnG51]

Hi I have Vodafone fibre to the home, and all three of our Samsung phones will not update the Android updates if connected by WiFi. Fails reporting network or server error. But if you turn off the Vodafone router firewall, it then updates. How do I report this to get this fixed as this worked when with EE.

[Jayach]

@JohnG51 

That sounds like a very strange problem. I think I would try a factory reset on the router first.

If that doesn't help you can use live chat https://www.vodafone.co.uk/bbservcd/ or call on 08080 034 515 to report it to Vodafone, but I wouldn't expect them to be able to do much. 

However as others have found getting a static IP to help you could also try that. Use live chat for that also.