SiriusXM Traffic subscription is up to date and last week live traffic stopped working. Spent several calls with SXM who advise that it's the firmware. Mercedes dealership says call Mercedes Customer Care (800-222-0100). Customer Care can't assist and transfer me to MBrace. Obviously, since car is pre-2016, they have no answer. Apparently the issue has to do with the end to 3G and my Firmware CANNOT be updated and Mercedes is not offering any work around. Car is completely stock and I'm an Android user, not iPhone if that matters. Please enlighten me about the issue and of any fixes? Thanks muchly.

 

You already have your answer, highlighted above...

You can do a search to see all the other threads about the end of 3G

 

The satellite service has no interaction with the 3G service called mBrace.

Traffic data is beamed down via the XM satellite digital radio data stream that's why we pay XM for it.

I used to subscribe to XM Traffic Data before Covid. It worked well on map displays.

I tried getting this working again after Covid with XM website. Their customer service is useless beyond self-help.

 

Call and cancel the Sirus traffic subscription. They usually pro-rate by the day. I usually do their $60 for a year or $30 for 6 months type promo. I had it before and Google maps was much more accurate with their traffic than Sirius, theirs was always behind by a bit.

As we don't have android auto, I'm always wondering why not get a big tablet with gps, turn on wifi and the phone hotspot and just use that for gps maps. You could also download the offline maps for the area so that even if you don't have traffic, you'd still have maps even in a dead zone. But then that gets complicated. I just use a garmin mount for my dash/phone and it's fine. That's pretty much what all those Uber/Lift drivers are doing these days.

 

just use Google maps .. it’s free and has live traffic updates… that’s prolly where Sirius gets their traffic data. Google for obvious reasons sends data to the phone and phone sends data back including speed from a lot of their app users … with the correct algorithm coupled with highway dept, and other sources it can determine where the traffic is and marks it on the map..

 

Weird part is that 'live traffic' worked fine until 3 weeks ago when I had the oil changed and re-set the service reminder. So you're telling me that SiriusXM has NOTHING to do with the expiration of 3G? See, that makes sense to me. There's gotta be a fix CaliBenzDriver!

 

I do and continue to. Would rather not tho. Thanks.

 

Turns out it's not a 3G issue after all. Older e-class Comand have different radio codes. One for 'radio' and one for 'data' and turns out that SiriusXM sent signals and updates to the 'radio'. Once it was determined that the code went to the wrong place, the code was re-sent to 'data' and, ta-daa, all's working fine. That being said, SiriusXM's 'Live Traffic' is average at best but it's better than using my phone/data/battery, etc. So older e-classers, have hope. All is not dead with 3G! Thanks for your advice.

 

glad it worked for you , curios have you updated your maps also ?