I just opened up setting on my iPhone 4s and noticed something different. There is now a personal hotspot option.

So I borrowed my mothers 4s who is also on tesco and checked her settings. There was no hotspot option. So I went into settings, general, about, and I got a message saying there was a carrier update available so I chose update now.
Then restarted the phone and there we have, it the hotspot option is now there on my mams phone.

The lack of the hotspot option on tesco mobile has allways annoyed me. And I was going to change provider because of it. Thankfully it looks like tesco's finally caught up.

Well that's good news and yet another reason for people to use Tesco mobile. Now if only there was a usable signal in my village

Yeah honestly if someone wants be on O2 it probably is better be on Tesco as least you get an English call centre then.

Isn't this an iPhone issue/feature and nothing to do with the service provider whether Tesco or whoever?

Nope it's up to tesco to enable the feature.

.. and Apple I believe, that's why giffgaff don't have this feature, not because they don't want it, but because Apple won't recognise them as an official carrier.

Ah, OK. I thought it was a standard feature from my experience of using a Tesco PAYG WM phone on O2.

I think that's why they can't automatically set the APN as well and you have to manually configure it. It is not because they use the O2 network, because giffgaff have their own HLR etc, but the iPhone has an inbuilt carrier list and you have to have settings in that list to do things like set the APN automatically and enable the wireless hotspot.

My friend has an iPhone 4 on Tesco Mobile and after updating to 7.1 and his carrier settings the Personal Hotspot functionality appeared.

Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't it been available on Android Tesco Mobile phones for a while?

Just wish they'd implement Visual Voicemail now...

Good point about visual voicemail don't think there is actually anything stopping them from using that as you can do it on O2 so the behind the scenes stuff is in place. Honestly surprised after all these years that only O2 and EE have set this up and even then EE only did it last year.

Yea pretty sure androids had it for a while.
I know there was posts on other boards years ago that said tesco has to negotiate legal agreements with apple, which is possibly why it took so long to come to iPhones.

How long has visual voicemail been a feature of ios. It must have been there a while.
Does it require majour changes to the network to implement?

It requires a bit of work on the network's part yes, additional servers I believe, quite a bit of extra work.

iOS has had Visual Voicemail since iPhone was released in 2007!

I appreciate a lot of work is needed "behind the scenes" but seeing as Tesco Mobile piggy back on the 02 network, that side of it's done, surely?!

It amazes me (slightly off topic here) how Vodafone Australia also run the service but not Vodafone UK!

Vodafone UK has always been a network they never truly cared about I doubt they would be doing the massive overhaul they are at moment if they didn't need to do it. Vodafone Australia actually has a better network than Vodafone UK. Would say that Vodafone Germany Vodafone Spain and Vodafone Italy are considered a higher importance than the UK arm. Even Ireland might be as if the EU approves merger tomorrow they will have to be careful not lose majority share in Ireland over the next year.

Please don't think I am being sarky but I haven't clue what you base that on? The home market of any company is culturally important, its what allowed them to expand in the first place. Yes I would agree Vodafone has neglected its UK assets in previous years but the massive overhaul and investment as you say taking place will go a long way to correcting that. The CEO has as good as said he wants the company to increase its European portfolio diversity with a particular focus on its home market. I say this with a frank and relatively unbiased opinion I genuinely do believe once the rollout of each network is complete Vodafone will be blazing a trail while the rest is left behind. The market as it stands in this country is in a transition, that much we can all agree, the talk of EE or Three being better networks is all subjective given 4G rollout and upgrades is not complete for any Network by a long shot. My point is this, Vodafone is spending money to upgrade 2G/3G/4G in one go not the piecemeal approach that is seemingly being adopted by EE and Three, given how much EE has said its spending on improving call quality one wonders why it didn't so this in the beginning rather than focus solely on 4GEE.

When all is said and done Vodafone will arguably have the better setup which will be future proof and more cost effective going forward.

Okay I agree with a lot of things you have said there. Couple of minor points one calling it neglect is kind of the wrong word a total lack of care for nearly a decade is far better lol. I do like and have said in various posts about the way O2/Vodafone are doing there 4G upgrade plan it does seem to be the more future proof method as you have said.

Vodafone have secured themselves an excellent spectrum package as you have said which should give them a excellent chance at delivering one of the best 4G networks in the UK. There fibre backhaul certainly gives an interesting aspect to the bill as well should increase there profits after the initial investment is negated.

The reason I honestly feel they not bothering about the UK is simply there price who in the right mind is going pay 47 pounds a month for 2GB of data when they could go EE and get 5GB of data for 40 pounds a month. Not saying they should compete with Three on price but they need to at least compete with EE on price. EE is probably in the better position for the near future.

Yes I do agree Vodafone is turning things around but not where it actually matters to the consumer which is the key thing. I actually want Vodafone to properly compete in the 4G race because I think they honestly can. It has just always been over the years Vodafone UK was given less priority then well any of the other branches. For example they only just started trailing HDVoice on there UK network most of the continent has has for a while. Next there payment system again launching first on the continent do I need go on?

Not bashing Vodafone as honestly have considered over the years to join them two things put me of lack of 3G which should be resolved over the next few years and will bring 4G at same time and lack of caring about the UK Market. Must admit the prices as well at the moment kind you off as well.

PS you mentioned EE doing a voice quality upgrade in fairness to them that is actually a mass Orange networks thing so makes sense it wasn't planned when they launched 4G. It's to do with launching HDVoice on 2G and enabling cross network.

PPS if I went with them would like get there 12 Month sim only 5GB Plan that is pretty good value at £31 just seems handset contracts aren't good value which a lot of people go for let's be honest.

BIB: I currently pay £43.40 a month for 'unlimited calls and texts' and 12GB of mobile data as I get a 30% discount from a friend who works for Vodafone; otherwise I'd be paying £62 a month on a year's agreement.

That is pretty good value when you factor in a year's Spotify Premium subscription. I'm not sure what I want to do in terms of upgrading my mobile phone once my contract expires in November 2014 (part of me is considering joining Tesco Mobile to collect Clubcard points, plus the fact there's no "upfront cost" for their iPhone handsets) but if I elect to stay with Vodafone then that plan would be ideal.

Considering how bad Vodafone is as a network, i don't think they have the luxury of doing the piecemeal approach. Before the Orange/T-Mobile merger Data was worse on Vodafone , Call Quality was worse on Vodafone, and their online customer portals favourite thing is to just bring up errors. They missed Ofcoms 3G coverage target timeframe, they had to bribe most of their staff to use the Vodafone network 6 or 7 years ago by offering them the unlimited everything staff plan because most employes used rival networks.

Yes, it was a major demo feature in Steve Jobs keynote announcement back in January that year. It was one of the features that first attracted me to the iPhone. Funny thing is I had it with O2 when they first launched the iPhone in this country but after a couple of years I moved back to Orange and must say I've not actually missed it. Indeed I am now with EE and didn't even realise they now have it, I will enable it again.

I don't get that many voicemails, but I always found visual voicemail to be far better than conventional voicemail as you didn't have to bother making a call and mucking about cycling through the menus and other voicemails you may have had to get to the one you wanted. It's by no means a make-or-break feature - I've been exclusively an iPhone user since the first one, although I have from time to time been with networks that didn't have it and it wasn't that much of an issue.

That said, now I'm on Three and use HulloMail, which in some ways is even better as it can transcribe (with varying degrees of success) your incoming voicemails too (as well as providing the same sort of visual voicemail features). You can also use it with a landline too which is handy for creating a unified voicemail for both home and mobile.

If I remember right EE enabled it around January/February last year. They didn't really advertise it at all.

O2 has visual voicemail on Android via the TuGo app.

It was indeed January, and then from around August (?) onwards they started advertising it to EE and Orange customers if I remember rightly.

EE and Orange customers are on the same voicemail platform, EE customers get VV included, but Orange customers have to pay a fee for it. It was "coming soon" to T-Mobile customers when I migrated to EE last year. I would suspect its still "coming soon" until the two voicemail platforms are merged (or one got rid of).