Mobile Broadband

[Romane]

Good morning

Have been with Vodafone now for about 6 months, this time round. Last time, was with a mobile phone, and I swore that would never touch Vodafone again. Circumstances change, and found self in need of an Internet connection that would work where had no landline, where ADSL and cable were not yet available (and where it is unlikely that even the new NBN will ever reach). So, 3G. Ending up choosing Vodafone because it appeared to have the best value plan. That is another story, but it can be read at Whirlpool. So once more, not happy.

Looking at the Vodafone coverage maps, we have a good spread of 900mhz here in Glenwood (in Queensland). Experience with my wife's Crazy John's phone (Vodafone is the carrier) showed good coverage and reception. Tested with a prepaid for a month, and had service. So went ahead with Vodafone.

At first, not too bad. Average speeds, day or night, averaged between 50Kb/s and 160Kb/s.  But over the last two months or so, it has reduced to abysmal. About 80% of the time, regardless time of day or night, am lucky to achieve speeds measured in Kb/s. Normal is between 200 BYTES per second to 5000 BYTES per second. BYTES !!

Oh, yeah, the other (about) 20% of the time, reasonable service as at the start.

Before get asked, nothing has changed. Am still near the top of a hill, the modem (Huwai 585) is still located in the same window, the laptop is still in the same position on the desk, it is a rural area so encroaching suburbia is not a factor, no new trees have been planted, and there has been no increase (in general terms - weekendersn come and go) of the population - thems that was here when moved here are still here, thems that weren't, aren't.

Is Vodafone able to explain why this sudden consistent deterioration in service has come about?

Romane

[Bart]

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Romane wrote:

At first, not too bad. Average speeds, day or night, averaged between 50Kb/s and 160Kb/s.  But over the last two months or so, it has reduced to abysmal. About 80% of the time, regardless time of day or night, am lucky to achieve speeds measured in Kb/s. Normal is between 200 BYTES per second to 5000 BYTES per second. BYTES !!

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Hi Romane,

A reduction in mobile broadband performance over time can be attributed to a few factors such as user levels in the area increasing and changes made to the network setup in the area.

You've mentioned that your setup hasn't changed and that data is still being transferred via the connection, but slower than it used to; this suggests that you're correct in saying that your setup/device isn't to blame. If it was a hardware/setup fault on your end, normally the connection would cease to work without slow data flow.

I think in this instance the next step will be to raise this to our network team to investigate. So I can arrange this, I'll need you to send me an email; I've sent you a private message with my email contact details, you can find these here.

Thanks, Bart.