Mobile Broadband

[DrewMercer]

Ordered pocket Wifi 2 modem from Vodafone last week - arrived yesterday. Seemed like a great deal, then I start to browse the web....

This device/network is a farce. How can I have 5 bars of reception and my download speeds be 0.11Mbps???

FIX YOUR NETWORK VODAFONE no wonder you have so many complaints against you. 

Here is my trouble shooting answers:

Part A: 

Postcode: 2101

Suburb: Narrabeen NSW

Service difficulties (Call drops, Unable to send SMS, slow data speeds, No signal ETC): Slow data speeds

Time of day (AM/PM, times , be specific): All day, morning, afternoon, night

How long has it been occurring: 2 days

Any other Vodafone users identified the same issues?:  N/A




Part B:

Mobile Device in use: Pocket Wifi 2

Device used for isolation test: Laptop, iPad, iPhone

How long have you had the device? : 2 days

Any other comments:

5 full bars of reception constantly and my download speeds are painfully slow. Honestly, I had better download speeds 15 years ago with the old dial up system. Can someone explain how this device is so painfully slow???

This is clearly a known problem judging by the amount of complaints on this forum and others. I see no reason why I shouldn't complain to the TIO, the company should advertise their network is congested instead of sucking in customers through tv and online deals. 

Vodafone website shows 3 dots indoors and 4 dots outdoors for my area. 

I have tried turning the device on and off, resetting the device, turning my laptop/iPad/iPhone on and off, turning my firewall off, you name it, I have tried it. 

Judging by other posts, I am assuming there is no fix for this, the network is simply under too much strain. If you think I am waiting for an "upgrade" to happen in my area (which may or may not fix the problem), I will not. 

Now, my question is, how do I cancel this service and (I expect) not pay any cancellation fees etc?

[James]

Hi DrewMercer,

The initial information you have provided is much appreciated, and I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing such poor signal strength so early in your tenure with us. I have a few things I would like to discuss with you outside the public arena, and for me to do that, I will need to bring this conversation private.

I will send you a PM with instructions on how to send your information through to me, and you can access your PM's by clicking this link.

Kind Regards,

James. 

[Franconian]

I have exactly the same issue. I just bought a pocket Wifi 2.

Before I used Optus serivces, but the coverage was too weak. I was hoping the Vodafone 850MHz network would be the solution for me. However it is slower now than before with Optus! I agree, my dial up 56K modem 8 years ago was faster.

I have a stable connectino with 5 bars on my Pocket Wifi 2. Changing from 3G to H sometimes.

My postcode is 2037 NSW, Suburb: Glebe

According to the Vodafone coverage map there is excellent coverage in my area which is only a stones throw away from central Sydney.

[mshapiera]

I have had the exact same problem with my pocket wifi for over 6 months.  It took me 3 months to get vodafone to agree that the first modem was faulty (it kept locking up and I had to remove the battery every 3 hours to get it to work), data speeds would fluctuate betweeen 480kbps to 42 kbps.  got a second wifi modem and this has never worked ok.  for the last 2 weeks i have been talking to vodafone support.  i have tested 1mb downloads while taklng to them and speeds have been from 49kbps to 8kbps.  each time they have rung me wanting to close the support call saying that network support have found no porblems with the network., not once has network support contacted me.  Its the modem that has been the problem but vodafone refuse to acknowledge this.  they will not offer replacement modems as the first one had "to be tested" to verify a problem.  I was given the pocket wifi from vodafone as a replacement for my normal usb 3g modem which had no problems at all.

network coverage in my area, 2256, is 3g.  I ahve a 3g phone that works no problems connected to the 3g network, but has problems when i connect to the pocket wifi modem.

[Maddie]

I have exactly the same issue. I just bought a pocket Wifi 2. I was hoping the Vodafone 850MHz network would be the solution for me.  have a stable connectino with 5 bars on my Pocket Wifi 2. Changing from 3G to H sometimes.

Hi Franconian, 

It's disappointing to hear you haven't been satisfied with your service so early on,  I'll definitely look into this and help get this issue sorted. 

My postcode is 2037 NSW, Suburb: Glebe

According to the Vodafone coverage map there is excellent coverage in my area which is only a stones throw away from central Sydney.

It's great that you've taken the initiative to check your coverage via our Coverage Checker and your right, your certainly within our coverage zone and should be receiving a much more reliable connection. 

Did you know we also have a Network Upgrades page, where you can check and see planned and completed upgrades in your area. I've taken a look at this for you and can see there is currently upgrades being worked on in Pyrmont. This could certainly be affecting your data service and I'm sorry for the inconvenience it's causing you. These upgrades are planned to completed on the 8th of May. 

If you're ever facing a problem with your service, we've got some great troubleshooting steps outlined here that will help narrow down exactly what's happening. 

It would be great if you could please complete the trouble shooting steps and let me know you answers to part III. This will allow me to be be a little more specific and set up a network investigation, if needed. 

Thanks, 

Maddie 

[Maddie]

Its the modem that has been the problem but vodafone refuse to acknowledge this.  they will not offer replacement modems as the first one had "to be tested" to verify a problem.  I was given the pocket wifi from vodafone as a replacement for my normal usb 3g modem which had no problems at all.

network coverage in my area, 2256, is 3g.  I ahve a 3g phone that works no problems connected to the 3g network, but has problems when i connect to the pocket wifi modem.

Hi Mshapiera,

This certainly isn't an experience I like to hear from any of our customers and I would really like to take a further look into this for you, to determine exactly what's happening. To start an investigation I'll need to ask you a few questions to get a clear understanding of what's happening and what troubleshooting has been completed.

Are you using a Pocket Wifi 1 or 2? You can check this by looking on the back of the modem, as you will see a '2' if your using the Pocket Wifi 2.

When speaking to our Support Team over the phone, did you complete any trouble shooting? This may have included some quick and easy trouble shooting steps, such as: switching your device off/on and resetting your device.

Thank you for confirming your postcode. So I can also check your coverage it would be great if you could let me know your suburb, as I can see there are a few in 2256 and this will allow me to narrow down my search.

It's disappointing to hear this hasn't yet been resolved, however I'm sure working together we will get this sorted and get you back up and running in no time. I look forward to your reply and working with you further.

Thanks,

Maddie 

[TomF]

Hi,

I too am suffering from the same problem.

Up to 6th July 2012 I was happily using my Pocket WiFi (PW) on the 2100MHz network with reasonably good speed. All of a sudden I find that I'm operating at a greatly reduce speed due to the PW dropping down to a 2G connection. After some consultation with Vodafone support it was determined that the 2100MHz network had been significantly downgraded in my area (3123, Hawthorn East) and that I should get hold of a PW2 to take advantage of the "much faster" 850MHz network. This I did on 11th July. Since then I have been operating on either 3G or HSDPA networks (I assume the 850MHz), varying over time. However my speeds are only slightly higher than the slow 2G service I was receiving earlier in the week. For example this page was downloaded at an average speed of 26 bits per second (According to the PW2 webpage data).

Part A:

Postcode: 3123

Suburb: HAWTHORN EAST

Service difficulties: Very slow data speeds

Time of day: All day, every day. Can't be more specific than that. It's every time I use it.

How long has it been occurring: Since I got the PW2 on Wednesday, so 3 days+ now.

Any other Vodafone users identified the same issues?: Yes

Part B:

Mobile device in use: Pocket WiFi 2

Device used for isolation test: Laptop/iPhone

How long have you had the device: 3 days

Any other comments:

Am seeing full signal strength (5 bars indoors and out). Typical download speeds are as low as 26b/s. Independent speed test (ozspeedtest.com) just completed, reported line speed 482kbps, download speed 60kbps - isn't that pretty close to dial-up? Given that I should be on a "new" upgraded part of your network I should be seeing much better performance than this. What is going on? Where are the promised "much faster speeds on the 850MHz network"? Have gone through many power cycles of both device and computer to no avail.

Please sort this out.

[VietBui]

Hi,

I got the same problem with the other two. I've been using this PW 2 a friend of mine gave to me for 1 month. During the past month, I had 3G and H 5 bars with reasonable speed in the afternoon and good speed in the morning and after 10pm (I assume that is due to the load increased when more people use internet at home around night time). However, last week I started getting 2G with no signal bar. Sometimes the signal jumps back to 3G and H, but after around 20m it is 2G with no bar again. I've try the network coverage and outages and have seen that there are works being carried out around my area (3021), but I'm not too sure if this is the case since my area is a bit far from where upgrade is being done.

Part A:

Postcode: 3021

Suburb: St Albans

Service difficulties: Very slow data speeds, 3G and H down to 2G with no reception.

Time of day: Hard to tell. One minute, it's H. The next it's 2G no signal. Then when I reset it or let it be, it turns back to 3G. It keeps going around like that. Even at night time when it should be good.

How long has it been occurring: Since early last week/the week before last week

Any other Vodafone users identified the same issues?: Yes

Part B:

Mobile device in use: Pocket WiFi 2

Device used for isolation test: Laptop/iPad

How long have you had the device: Around 50 days

Any other comments: I have contacted vodafone earlier when I first got my device, due to 20kb/s download speed at night and 200-300kb/s in the morning (I need use my device after school, not in the morning, by the way. So it's nothing good that way). They told me my area has planned upgrade work but will not be done until November and there's nothing they can do, so I just wait to see some miracles happen. Now I got this. Please check if there's anything you can do?

[Bruno]

Hi TomF,

TomF wrote:

Up to 6th July 2012 I was happily using my Pocket WiFi (PW) on the 2100MHz network with reasonably good speed. All of a sudden I find that I'm operating at a greatly reduce speed due to the PW dropping down to a 2G connection. After some consultation with Vodafone support it was determined that the 2100MHz network had been significantly downgraded in my area (3123, Hawthorn East) and that I should get hold of a PW2 to take advantage of the "much faster" 850MHz network. This I did on 11th July. Since then I have been operating on either 3G or HSDPA networks (I assume the 850MHz), varying over time. However my speeds are only slightly higher than the slow 2G service I was receiving earlier in the week. For example this page was downloaded at an average speed of 26 bits per second 

I can certainly appreciate that the data speeds you're getting are causing you some frustration, especially when the device is showing full coverage.

Let me start by thanking you for including the information in the troubleshooting template for me, these details help me to get a really clear picture of the issue and what might be happening for you.

Looking at the coverage in your area, you should certainly be getting great speeds as there is full 850 coverage indicated. Clearly that's not the case for you, so let's look at what may be impacting your service.

While there are currently no outages reported in (or near) Hawthorn east, the symptoms that you've described (full signal but poor data speed) are typical of a nearby outage pushing traffic onto the towers that you are connecting to. This increase in traffic means that, while coverage is strong, the bandwidth available for data usage is minimal. While I can't say that this is the exact cause (as there are no reported outages) it is certainly the most likely scenario.

TomF wrote:

Am seeing full signal strength (5 bars indoors and out). Typical download speeds are as low as 26b/s. Independent speed test (ozspeedtest.com) just completed, reported line speed 482kbps, download speed 60kbps - isn't that pretty close to dial-up? Given that I should be on a "new" upgraded part of your network I should be seeing much better performance than this. What is going on? Where are the promised "much faster speeds on the 850MHz network"? Have gone through many power cycles of both device and computer to no avail.

I'd really like to get our network team to take a look at the data speed issues that you're having, so I've sent you a private message with my contact details. Once I receive your email with the information that I've requested, I can get the investigation under way so that we can get your broadband working the way that it should be again.

In the meantime, if you have any other questions or if there is anything else that I can help you with, please let me know.

Cheers,

-Bruno.

[Bruno]

Hi VietBui,

VietBui wrote:

I got the same problem with the other two. I've been using this PW 2 a friend of mine gave to me for 1 month. During the past month, I had 3G and H 5 bars with reasonable speed in the afternoon and good speed in the morning and after 10pm (I assume that is due to the load increased when more people use internet at home around night time). However, last week I started getting 2G with no signal bar. Sometimes the signal jumps back to 3G and H, but after around 20m it is 2G with no bar again. I've try the network coverage and outages and have seen that there are works being carried out around my area (3021), but I'm not too sure if this is the case since my area is a bit far from where upgrade is being done.

As per my post above, the best step that we can take now, is to get the network team to take a look at what is impacting your data speeds.

Can I please get you to email me at online.help@vodafone.com.au so that I can get some more detailed information from you and get the process started. Please use the code C248CBFNI in the subject field and in the body of your email, can you please include the information explained in this link.

Once I've received your email and the network team has investigate the issue, I will be able to see what has caused the decrease in your data speeds and what can be done to fix it for you.

In the meantime, if there's anything else that I can help you with, please let me know.

Cheers,

-Bruno.