Sure Signal

I have been trying to set up a Vodafone Sure signal device on my bipac 7800dxl router. The router sees the device allocates it a ip address but does not seem to send any thing to the outside world.
Do I need to get my ISP BT to do anything or need to open any specific ports on the router?Any help would be appreciated.

How long ago did you set it up? The Vodafone setup seems to see it can take between 1 and 24 hours for it to become active. See "How do I setup and register Sure Signal" on this page.

Not BTs responsibility.

Vodafone will advise you on what ports are used and what firewall rules will be needed.

Previously when I have set up SureSignal on BT with BT hub nothing extra was needed.

Hi Thanks for those two replies
I have been trying to set up this device for at least 10days now and have spoken to Vodafone technical support on numerous occasions> Support is not the correct discription as there total advice is Reset it Reset the hub wait 36 hours. Not a great deal of help after the third attempt.. They seem unable to understand what ports need to be open or what fire wall protocols need to be in place.
So as you see I am going around in circles.

I gave-up with the Sure Signal and had Vodafone enable WiFi Calling on my account. That means my iPhone will use WiFi for calling and text, both at-home and when travelling (in the UK, overseas WiFi calling is blocked). It's handy when I'm visiting friends who have great WiFi but no mobile phone reception.

You should not need to do anything. Basically the SureSignal opens up a VPN tunnel to the Vodafone servers over which the traffic is carried, and you can't see anything. It is important to make sure your SureSignal is registered on your Vodafone account and it can take a while for it to become active initially. Wait at least 24 hours without powering it down is probably a good idea.

They are however something of a black box, and in 2019 for most people WiFi calling is a better option to be honest. Mine only sticks around now because it is already there. To be honest I should probably turn it off as I have enabled WiFi calling on my phone; got to think of the Bangladeshis.

I thought it set up a VPN .However that does not explain why Vodafone could not achieve that.
I have enabled wifi calling on my Iphone 7 but it doesnt seem to work well as the phone tries to pick up the 1 bar signal from the not so local mast. However that is not a topic for this forum. I think i shall commit the Sure Signal to the WPB and get on with my life!

In reply to a post by crule:

I have enabled wifi calling on my Iphone 7 but it doesnt seem to work well as the phone tries to pick up the 1 bar signal from the not so local mast.

If wifi calling on Vodafone works similar to EE�s and Three�s offering then you should be able to force your iPhone to use Wi-Fi calling at all times when indoors by simply putting your iphone into airplane mode but keeping Wi-Fi enabled. This works on my iPhone 8 and iPhone XS on Three and EE respectively.

My iPhone XR always uses WiFi calling and text in preference to mobile. It reports 'Vodafone WifiCall' instead of 'Vodafone' when active, despite my having 2-3 bars of 4G at home.

I assumed this was the way it is supposed to work, since WiFi reduces load on their local network it makes sense to avoid wherever possible. Better for it to make use of my BT FTTP, which also provides landline thanks to FVA.

In my home, it seems everything goes down the fibre

In reply to a post by DougM:

My iPhone XR always uses WiFi calling and text in preference to mobile. It reports 'Vodafone WifiCall' instead of 'Vodafone' when active, despite my having 2-3 bars of 4G at home.

I assumed this was the way it is supposed to work, since WiFi reduces load on their local network it makes sense to avoid wherever possible. Better for it to make use of my BT FTTP, which also provides landline thanks to FVA.

In my home, it seems everything goes down the fibre

When EE wifi calling on iOS was launched in 2015, it worked that way, ie wifi calling always kicked in irrespective of cellular signal strength. However, in the last year or two, EE have changed this and wifi calling now only kicks in when the signal bars fall below a certain threshold, like Three's implementation. I personally preferred EE's old method as it meant the phone wasn't constantly switching between cellular radio & wifi calling where you had patchy indoors signal.

Edited by deleted (Wed 10-Jul-19 15:50:49)