Onstar Wifi interference causing business phone system to drop calls

[Yukon Forum]

I ran across several sites today that said they were able to disable the WiFi. They pretty much described my experience with OnStar word for word, but according to them, if they disabled the WiFi in BOTH their On-Line web account AND their mobile app the WiFi would turn off. Only problem is that I do not have either of these.

Anybody have an OnStar on-line account and mobile app willing to try and turn theirs off to see if it can be done?

 

[dbbd1]

Yes, that is how I did it. In both. I still want to disconnect my onstar box though. I still have the green idiot light on my mirror and, every now and then, I get a message saying that I have "limited" service with onstar.

 

[Yukon Forum]

Thanks for the info... that is good to know! I have heard several mention that when they disabled the WiFi using the Onstar website it only placed the wireless connection in "Hidden" mode and was still active. It was only recently that I discovered others reporting that when they used the GM app in tandem it actually turned off the radio. Very frustrating if true with all the conversations I have had with OnStar, taking the Yukon to the dealer for an entire day, having the dealer talk to tech services, and none of them knowing or admitting it could be shut off?

I have seen several sites mentioning the "Limited Service" announcement. Most have said this can be disabled if you call OnStar. I guess they claim it can not to be turned off anymore, but if your persistent they will do it for you. I do not have this problem personally, but I passed on the free trial and have never activated the device.

 

[Lt Belspur]

Just my opinion,

I would look at you business phone system first. You may have a loose unshielded cable somewhere.

What happens when another Wi-Fi enabled vehicle enters your business.

Looking at your chart. How close was the vehicle to the other SSID'S?

Does this happen when a cell phone hotspot is active?

 

[Yukon Forum]

Just my opinion,

I would look at you business phone system first. You may have a loose unshielded cable somewhere.

What happens when another Wi-Fi enabled vehicle enters your business.

Looking at your chart. How close was the vehicle to the other SSID'S?

Does this happen when a cell phone hotspot is active?

Good suggestion, but I am sure it is not an issue of shielding. The spectrum analyzer displays high energy RF interference as soon as the vehicles are turned on. We have had the phone system for over a decade and our internal wireless system has been in place for 3-4 years. We have not had any issues with static until the OnStar WiFi devices came into the picture. The static occurs as soon as the vehicle is started or pulls in the drive, and goes away when it is turned off or leaves. We do not have any issues with the phone system unless the OnStar devices are running.

We only have two vehicles with the WiFi option and both are causing static on our phone. We are back from the road far enough we do not have issues with people driving by, and we are not really open to the public, so it is not an issue with customers stopping by. If we could simply turn off the OnStar WiFi radios that are not being used it would resolve our issue.

 

[Yukon Forum]

I thought I would write an update.

The good news is I was able to fix the 2018 Equinox WiFi interference by simply pulling the onstar fuse. It was awesome!!!! Wifi shut off and the next owner just needs to reinstall the fuse if they want to use the features in the future. It pleases me to see this. GM is not going to want to update security issues on a ten year old car. Today's vehicle electronics are now a security nightmare. I am happy to see if you don't use this feature, you can simply pull the fuse and not worry about updating something that is not needed.

The bad news is this did not work for the Yukon. Onstar/GM basically confirmed the wifi device can not be shut off. When the app is used... it will hide the wireless SSID which keeps your phone from trying to connect to it, but it does not shut off the radio. I tried pulling the onstar fuse, and it did kill the onstar, but my dash lit up with errors afterward. It appears pulling the fuse disables the air bags, stability control, and several other errors, and knocks out the compass. I am heading to the dealer tomorrow so they can try to kill the onstar, but sounds like it will be permanent and hard for the next owner to reconnect it. Wish me luck!!!!

 

[Tahoe14]

If you do a Google search you should be able to find out how to do it. I think is is behind the radio or glove box and you unplug the Onstar module.

 

[Yukon Forum]

I took the Yukon back to a different dealer today. The tech disabled the Onstar device as planned which did kill the WiFi signal. There were no error messages on the console afterward, such as the air bags and stability control appeared to be working. I left the dealership... and soon after noticed the compass displayed "cal" as in calibrate, and then about a half mile down the road the Navigation system displayed a "GPS" icon with a red x through it.

I took it back to the dealer and he said he would have to e-mail GM and see what they have to say about it. He offered to reconnect it in the meantime, but I told him to just skip it for now and we could deal with it later. I am really happy I did that now, because several strange issues have been resolved.

1. I had hardwired my old garmin GPS in the Yukon as the built-in nav sucks. The old Garmin worked great in the other vehicles, but it always had a hard time finding a gps signal in the Yukon. I assumed it was the windshield, as some are coated with metal which blocks the GPS signal. Often driving down the road it would say "GPS lost" and under the best circumstances, I would only get a couple bars on the GPS strength meter. After the On-Star device was disabled, the Garmin GPS displayed a 5 bar signal strength and has worked perfectly ever since.

2. I used to have to drive right up to the garage door before the operator would work. After the On-Star device was disabled, the operator will now open the garage door before turning into our long driveway.

3. We would have cell phone quality issues from time to time. Low signal strength, and static were some of the issues. The phone has great signal now and the calls are crystal clear.

4. The original business phone issues are completely gone now. We can leave the vehicles running all day and not a single issue with the phone system now.

I kind of expected the compass to break when they killed the Onstar. The navigation system still works, but right below the time in the upper right corner, there used to be the direction indicator. It now displays a big "GPS" icon with a red x going through it. It also displays the calibrate compass icon at the top. The navigation is usable, but is riddled with error messages. The compass on the dash display around the digital speedometer at first said "Cal", but the error has went away now and it just no longer displays the direction I am heading. I used the compass, but it is not a deal breaker and the positive out weights it missing, but I hope that we can figure out a way to rid the error messages on the infotainment center. I will probably live with the errors, but it does not seem like I should have to.