Voda in 3G blackhole probe by ASA

There is a vodafone mast right next to my office building in central Glasgow (according to ofcom's sitefinder website).

I have to switch 3G off whenever I'm in the office and the battery drains so quickly trying to tune into a 3G signal. The GSM signal isn't much better, phone doesn't ring half the time.

Will be switching to O2 as soon as my contract is up.

Apparently part of Sheffield has similar problems.

Seems the case nationally with Vodaphone, in MK I rarely see a 3G signal at home despite their coverage checker saying we should get a good signal. They have so far provided us with a femtocell which helps a little as long as we are not using the Internet in which case call quality is no better.

not a capacity bottleneck?

Maybe it is just me mis-reading this but if they are so sure it is not a capacity bottleneck, why are they trying to add more sites (which I presume means masts/cells type stuff)?

Someone at Vodaphone really ought to be vetting replies to make sure they don't include contradictory information, or even any information at all....

and they're bringing a MiFi device to market?!

lol from another voda customer that is constantly attached to a 3UK MiFi

Interesting isn't it that people have resorted to the ASA rather than the toothless Ofcom.

City of london pretty bad as well

Just junked vodafone due to very poor 3g access in City of London. No problems so far with O2 there.

Mayfair & Clapham

Vodafone also has severe problems in Mayfair and Clapham. So much so that they allowed me to exit my contract with no penalities due to the poor performance of their data network in both Clapham where I live and Mayfair where I work.

They also arranged for our Mayfair based users to have an O2 SIM card, but to remain with Vodafone for their Blackberries, so as not to lose our contract. If this doesn't tell you there is a problem in Mayfair, then nothing will. Amazing really if they can't provide a service to the most expensive real estate in the world, the I would suggest Glasgow has no chance.

If you're getting a raw deal, pester Vodafone to leave them. It took my many phone calls, but they let me out of my contract in the end.

Same problem for me

I have been having this problem in Glasgow for over a year and no one else in my office is able to access data on their phone even though they have a full 3g signal. I originally posted to vodafone back in Feb and have had no luck using 3g ever at my office. I'm looking forward to cancelling my contract and moving to Three.

http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/iPhone-4/No-internet-access-with-5-bar-3G-signal/td-p/646279

All the notworks suck to an extent - I paid my way out of an O2 contract as the coverage was so poor. They told me to disable 3G on my iPhone as the 2G coverage was better - yeah nice suggestion. I actually switches to Vodafone after testing T-Mobile, Orange and Three and it was by far the best - for me - ymmv.

Newbury too.

And it's the home of Vodafone, Alanis...

Same for me in Edinburgh

Seems to have been getting steadily worse over the last 6 months.

Now 2 3rds of locations I might be have dropped to 2g including the bulk of the city centre.

On a strong 3g signal site lookup can take 30 seconds to timeout though page load tends to be OK.

Only on 3.5g do I seem to get anything like fit for purpose browsing and that seems to be about 10% coverage over Edinbugh just now.

My experience with the CS was slightly different in that they did offer to look up issues in areas if I supplied postcodes. At the time apparently 2 masts were down in the region of the airport, 1 by my flat and another around the Corstorphine regions. This was jsut after some very strong wind but since coverage is gettign worse I can just assume they are not putting them back up again.

I do like it how companies define what is 'fit for the purpose'. It has always been the right of the consumer to declare if it's fit for the purpose or not, under the Sales of Goods Act, except over six months. Since this is well documented, it would be hard for them to disprove the network had been persistently failing in Glasgow.

Which in the case of a smart phone, I'd say it really wasn't fit for the purpose if it can't get on the Internet. Sounds like a bit of scare tactics from Vodafone, don't want people to realise they could return their phones to me. There are of course some contractual issues. Might need some intervention by someone like the Office of Fair Trading.

Orange and Voda are just as bad as each other

Guess the networks need to start putting some of those profits back into the infrastructure......oh what then they wouldn't be able to take those huge bonuses for shafting their customers and patching the network to just.....just get by on a bare minimum.

Not just Edinburgh

Was on Voda and had plenty of "missed calls" with 4 bars (out of 5) signal but the phone never rang. You can expect a few of these, as the caller might hang up before the phone actually connects, but when they also leave voicemail messages as well?

The exact same phone, prior to being unlocked, was on Orange and never had this particular problem.

vodafone 3g network down south!

hi,

i live in birmingham UK and use a iphone 3gs which uses 3g. or should!

been with vodafone for many years and found when i had my iphone, the 3gs in parts of birmingham is crap! this also a pain in the bum as i cant use 3g at home. seems to works when it wants.

fed up of telling voda about this by calling or opening a call on there faults board. shame i got 12months on it still :-(

i feel your pain Glasgow!!!

I suspect

That most of this is capacity issues from where the network operators and voda in particular investment in cell sites and backhaul have failed to keep pace with the explosion in demand for 3G data services.

Like others in the city and the wharf I get excellent data performance between 7 and 9 am and by 10 I might as well be using a v34 modem.

What we need is to extend the bbc's crowd sourced coverage app so everyone can have a source of network performance data that explicitly refers to their area so they can make an informed choice on network.

Vote with your feet it's the only thing they understand.

Vodafone 3G coverage is poor where I need it the most

I have had an iPhone 4 with Vodafone a few weeks after it was released back in 2010.

I have been unable to get a decent 3G signal in the places that I need it the most, that would be in various parts of west and north west London.

Vodafone do not appear to be developing their 3G coverage as quickly, as say, 3.

Why haven't they deployed 3G over 900 MHz like o2 have? Ofcom have already given permission for this!

I've only got a few months left on my contract. I expect I'll unlock the handset and move over to 3, the network with greater 3G coverage and an 'all you can eat' data plan.

I am in no way connected to 3. My associates have had good experience with 3 and often have signal where I do not.

Pretty widespread

T mobile in Cheltenham is pretty ropey in places (not in the town centre store of course) where it shouldn't be, and my phone will be sitting there and suddenly tell me I have missed a call when its not even run and when I phone the person back they tell me that it went directly to voice mail. Data connectivity is pretty patchy too with T mobile support telling me that if I want a 3G signal I should go outside and when I said I often have NO data connectivity they told me to turn it to 2G only so that way it would find a signal. When I said this sort of defeated the purpose of have an "always on" data contract they told me to live with it.

Glasgow Cell

We are in Bothwell St in Glasgow and also experience this issue. Apparently there is a cell tower down by the Kingston Bridge that is busted, but to fix it they'd need to close a lane of the bridge to get a crane in or something. Which isn't going to happen any time soon.

They also said to me a while ago that they are very low on capacity in Glasgow and will be building about 9 more cell sites before the end of the year.

Having talked to other people in area Voda are actually putting in building femto-cells in some premises (at their expense and with their broadband backhaul) to get around this problem.

Just Glasgow?

I've been happy with Vodafone for many years... until I got my first iPhone last year. I know I get patchy 3G where I live in Northants but even when I have a full Edge/2G signal I can barely get any data, I also spend a lot of time in Coventry and have found in some parts of the city centre my phone is completely unusable! In the case of Coventry Vodafone have told me they're aware of the problem, but how long do we have to wait for an "aware" to become "fixed"?

I'm due my next upgrade in a few weeks and to be honest I really don't want to switch from a network that has served me well for 10+ years... but I'm already looking at the alternatives!