Network

[molybtek]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone know if there is a problem with Vodafone's mobile data network at St Marys NSW?

Every evening around 7-10pm, I only get about 50kbps download, but 1500kbps upload. 

[zabzabcanfly69]

ha yea really simple answer for that its cause a bunch of people are using the bandwidth.. so basically its cause everyone is all using the internet at the same time and they call it a Peak time.

So essentially its like a bunch of people trying to get through a tunnel that has limited space. If a few people try to get through its quick and easy. If lots of people try to get through its hard cause they dont have the space and are trying to cram their way through..

Not a great explaination but hopefully it helps.

[Maddie]

Hi molybtek, 

molybtek wrote: Just wondering if anyone know if there is a problem with Vodafone's mobile data network at St Marys NSW? Every evening around 7-10pm, I only get about 50kbps download, but 1500kbps upload. 

We are always continuously improving our network and our network can perform in different ways depending on the circumstances. I'm confident working together we will determine what's causing you this experience. To get a better understanding of what's happening I'll need to ask you a few questions:

-How long have you bee having this issue and do you know other Vodafone users who have the same experience in your area? 

-Do you have any problems with other service such as: TXT and Calls or is it just isolated to Data? 

If your ever facing connectivity issues there's a few quick steps you can take, that may help get to the bottom of what's happening. Did you know we have some great online services that give you network updates on upgrades and things that my be impacting your service.

The first thing to do is to check our online Coverage Checker. Here by entering your exact address and device model you can look and see: 

- What frequency is strongest in your location and how much coverage you should expect to receive in the area. 

Secondly you can check for any known issues impacting the service in your area here and in your state here. 

For now I've checked 2760 and there hasn't been any issues reported, this doesn't mean that there isn't anything impacting your service just that one may not have been reported to our technicians. 

zabzabcanfly69 could be right, it may simply be peak time in your area and therefore the amount of users at the time are slowing the Internet connection down. 

I can arrange to have this investigated by our network team, if you like? To do this I'll need you to complete some quick and easy troubleshooting here and post back your answers to part III. I'll only ask you to do this once, as it will give us all the information needed to explore what' s happening in St Mary's. 

I'm looking forward to your reply and working with you further. 

Thanks,

Maddie 

[molybtek]

True, there could be an issue of contention, but surely it shouldn't degrade to the point where it is not usable should it?

Maddie,

- We're having this issue for about 2 weeks now. My wife also has the same problem.

- This only affects data, we can make calls and SMS without any problem. GSM/Edge seem to work if we force the phone to use 2G mode. But when it is in H with full reception, there are no data in the evening.

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S2 and HTC Desire HD

Both are having issues with different Vodafone SIM cards.

Postcode: 2760

Suburb: St Marys

Service Difficulties: DATA (3G) - slow/unusable speed - even just DNS lookup times out.

Time of day: evenings - any time after 6pm-11pm ish

Others: Wife who is also on vodafone is having the same problem.

[James]

Hi molybtek,

molybtek wrote:

True, there could be an issue of contention, but surely it shouldn't degrade to the point where it is not usable should it?

If the issue is infact congestion, then it's hard to determine exactly how much this would effect your service. The figures you've mentioned to us suggest quite a difference in performance, which I'd like to isolate and fix. 

molybtek wrote:

True, there could be an issue of contention, but surely it shouldn't degrade to the point where it is not usable should it?

Maddie,

- We're having this issue for about 2 weeks now. My wife also has the same problem.

- This only affects data, we can make calls and SMS without any problem. GSM/Edge seem to work if we force the phone to use 2G mode. But when it is in H with full reception, there are no data in the evening.

Thanks for taking the time to answer Maddie and share those extra details. I'd definitely like to work with you and explore some different options, so I've sent you a PM with instructions on how to sen your account specific details through to me, and you can access your PMs by clicking this link. Once I receive your email, I'll look at performing some more specific troubleshooting and running through some alternate options with your phone and plan.

If you've got any more questions for me, let me know.

Kind Regards,

James.

[molybtek]

Vodafone contacted me yesterday saying they have fixed the issue.

I've tried to do a speed test, and the result is

Ping: 184ms

Download: 77kbps

Upload: 754kbps

So they have made a little improvement. Before the fix, I was only getting 157kbps up, and now it's up to a decent upload speed. However, it is still pretty much unusable with many web pages time out constantly.

Hopefully they can make a little more improvement on the downlink as well...

[machine]

the slow speed is due to voda migrating all the Three users to the voda network.

Now the network cannot handle the volume of users.

Nice work voda.

It appears that voda cannot learn from past mistakes.

Can anyone smell a class action coming on?

[Jerome_F]

Hi molybtek,

molybtek wrote:

Vodafone contacted me yesterday saying they have fixed the issue.

I've tried to do a speed test, and the result is

Ping: 184ms

Download: 77kbps

Upload: 754kbps

So they have made a little improvement. Before the fix, I was only getting 157kbps up, and now it's up to a decent upload speed. However, it is still pretty much unusable with many web pages time out constantly.

Hopefully they can make a little more improvement on the downlink as well...

---

It's good that you've noticed some improvement, but it doesn't sound like this is to the extent we'd hope. I can see that James has previously sent you a Private Message with our contact details. If you'd like to talk to us further about this we'd be happy to receive an email from you, which will mean we can provide help specific to your account with us.

Thanks,
Jerome

[molybtek]

I've just checked the new coverage map. It's great to see that Vodafone is more transparent about their coverage, but pretty disappointed that according to the improvement plan, St Marys will only see marginal improvements in the long term.

[Madeleine]

Hi Molybtek,

molybtek wrote:

I've just checked the new coverage map. It's great to see that Vodafone is more transparent about their coverage, but pretty disappointed that according to the improvement plan, St Marys will only see marginal improvements in the long term.

---

Thanks for letting me know. We here at Vodafone believe that honesty is the best policy. We are very open about our coverage and the improvements we have instore.

I've had a look at our online Coverage Checker here and you're correct, going from this, there doesn't appear to be much else going on over the next 2-3 months. I spoke with our network team and that have let me know that our September 3G capacity upgrades are still in progress and therefore you won't be feeling their full effect as yet. The best way that I can describe these upgrades is like us popping extra lanes on a motorway to free up the traffic.

I can see that we have also incurred a known issue on the 28th of September which may have also influenced your 3G experience. Our technicians are working on this a quickly as they can to complete the upgrades and resolve any issues caused by these.

One part of your post that has got me curious was when you said that both you and your wife were having the same 3G issues on your S II and Desire HD, is that correct? The reason I ask is that your Galaxy S II is compatible on both of our 3G networks in St Marys, the 2100Mhz and 850Mhz frequencies. Your wife's Desire HD however is only compatible on the one 2100Mhz network. 3G wise this means that you should be able to maintain a much stronger 3G signal on your handset as the S II can access both of these signals. Did you get a chance to run through any of the troubleshooting that Maddie and James have provided above? A really quick and easy step that can be tried is to pop your SIM in a friend or family members phone and theirs in yours. This will work best if you can find someone who also has a phone compatible on both 3G networks. You can view our list of 850Mhz ready phones here. I'd just like to eliminate any hardware issues contributing to your data speeds on the S II as your experience should be noticeably better than on the Desire HD.

With the capacity upgrades coming to a finish in the next few week, I'm confident you should start to notice further improvement as we head towards mid to late October. Are you able to give me an update at the end of the month to let me know how it's all going?

From there we can continue to work together on this if required.

Cheers,
Madeleine