Vodafone has been upgrading its network all year as part of a planned $1 billion upgrade to persuade customers that, contrary to recent experience, its mobile network can be trusted. In its latest update on its progress, it says that more than 900 sites have now been upgraded to run its faster 850MHz network.
Picture by NRMA New Cars
Not all of Vodafone’s upgrades will convert sites to the newer 850MHz service; some merely replace existing equipment to try and boost reliability. The upgrade process isn’t due to finish until June next year at the earliest:
900 sites are now live in new the 850MHz network built for smartphones and data, and 2,000 sites in the existing network have been replaced with new equipment. By the middle of next year there will be 1,500 sites in the new 850MHz network and 8,000 sites where equipment has been replaced.
Vodafone also says that call drop out rates in metropolitan areas have fallen to below 0.5 per cent. If you’re still a Vodafone customer, has your experience improved in the last few months? Tell us in the comments.
smz
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:38 AMI cant compare to the past as I have just moved over from 3, however I am very happy with the service, haven’t had one call drop out in 2 months and I get consistent data (1-2 mbps). By the way i live in northern suburbs of Melbourne and travel to CBD and eastern suburbs by train every day.
Ben
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:41 AMI’ve recently switched to Vodaphone and have been pleasantly surprised with how reliable it is for calls. Internet connectivity is still a bit suspect in some areas, but when it works it’s fast.
At least in Brisbane, Internet coverage needs some work, but call coverage is very reliable, even in the Hinterlands.
Ryan
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:43 AMAt my house in Prestons NSW (Metro Sydney) I still get frequent call drops or loss of service. The only way I know it has happened is a voicemail comes through. Very frustrating as I work from home a lot.
geoff day
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:09 AMI work in Herschell st in the Brisbane cbd, and my Telstra nextG data coverage has steadily degraded recently. I personally think their oversubscribed. Yet many work colleagues ate reporting increasingly better data throughput on voda. After repeated complaints Telstra refuse to ack an issue
kristi
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:26 AMI use a mobile wifi2, which i use mainkly from home in Maroubra. I find the service almost unusable in the evening, although if I get on before 7am in the morning the speeds are ok. I’ve seen a slight improvement internet access on the bus home (accessed through Iphone 3g)
I really don’t use my phone much for calls anymore, I communicate mainly through txt but have noticed bad call reception in places like Vaucluse.
Jamie
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:26 AMI’ve been with Vodacrap for years. I don’t know why I stay with them over than I get a free Android handset every 2 years. Thie 850Mhz upgrade doesn’t impress me as I’ve always had goo signal reception. It’s the infrastructure that’s behind it that I want to see upgraded. Because when I do a speed test and get 1-Mbit upload but only 400k download, something is wrong…
Kanthan
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:27 AMIm out at Wentworth Point (Homebush Bay) next door to Olympic Park. Vodafone reception in my place and on the balcony ihovers between one bar and nothing using an iPhone. There are plenty of blackspots between the buildings as well.
Michael
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:27 AMI’ve just switched from 3 to Vodafone and wish I hadn’t :( Reception is marginally better i.e. no hassles with handset switching from 3 to Roaming all the time, but data is shocking!!! At home in Melbourne Northern Suburbs it works perfectly… In my office in the CBD i’m getting continuous timeouts then magically 1 hour later it’s as if there wasn’t an issue. A bit like someone in Vodafone is constantly tripping over a cord to the interwebz!
chris
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:33 AMCan anyone tell me the difference (if any) between the Voda and Three networks? I’ve been on Three in Perth, and been mostly happy, but am getting nagged to switch to Voda. Same company now, but is it the same network and towers? Especially as the 850mhz is no good to my beloved Nexus 1.
Sam
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 11:24 AM3 is still operated as a separate stand-alone network; however they’ve stopped accepting new customers, and it’s the general intention to move the existing customer base over onto Vodafone’s infrastructure (I can only presume they’ll do this by enforcing a mandatory switch over when customers sign to new contracts, or replicate existing account plan rates on Vodafone for those affected.
I know that in my case, my wife gets significantly better coverage with 3, than I do with Vodafone (which has also been tested with her SIM in my phone) – so I hope that when this happens, they’ll actively select which towers are decommissioned and which remain but get amalgamated into Vodafone; instead of just switching the whole network off.
In any case, considering that Vodafone blamed massive growth of data consumption by their user base; they’d want to make sure their network is up to the job before they introduce orphaned 3 customers onto it.
Julian
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 10:12 AMI’ve been in Perth’s city centre studying at the State Library for the past four days. Data speeds are unusable and trying to use iMessage on my 3GS won’t work, while my friends on Telstra have great reception and data speeds. Vodafone continually say they have upgraded areas that I frequent, however the only result will be the number of bars of reception on my phone being improved, but data speeds remain shit. My contract is up in 2 months…bye bye Vodafone! Hello Telstra!
Jackson Bison
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 11:46 AMStill crap. but still with ‘em.
go figure… ??
bazuden
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 11:57 AMYesterday I spoke to a bloke from 3, asking if I’d like to start a new contract with Vodafone. He mentioned that the Vodafone network in my area (Waterloo) had already been upgraded. My GF has been on Vodafone for at least 2 years in the area, and there’s been absolutely no improvement with her reception. Still lucky to get one bar when inside our apartment. Looks like I’ll be moving to Optus or Telstra.
Stove
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:06 PMVodafone is currently trying to get our business at work. They’re putting forward some very, very good prices – about half of what what we currently pay to telstra. They’re also willing to put a network quality/coverage guarantee in in the contract and port our services back to telstra for free if they don’t meet it.
For remote areas, they’ve got a weird system – you carry around a phone with a prepaid telstra sim in it, and when you have no vodafone reception the call will be redirected to the telstra number.
I’m kind of skeptical, but they’re really pushing hard with this. If the loan phones they give us get good coverage, I think we’ll probably go with them.
Dave Lord
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:08 PMThey are liars! Their coverage map shows that we have perfect coverage on the 850 network, as well as the 900 network.
The truth is, there are whole chunks of the day where we have absolutely no signal at all.
sdf
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:11 PMMoved to telstra about 2 weeks ago from voda. Couldn’t of been happier. the reception is unreal and the data speed is really awesome. The only problem iv found is the facebook app seems buggy, makes it seem like the network is not working but through trial and error (going from the app to the web interface of facebook) it seems its the app not telstra. plus with the byo phone i was able to get more data and calls from telstra at $20 cheaper
sdf
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:12 PMto me voda has really damaged their brand. If i was their ceo i would say fuck this 99% of population. Lets go 99% of land mass.
Jackson Bison
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:30 PMConsidering 70% of Australia’s landmass is desert/semi arid, that would be a pretty silly move.
I guess it ain’t no surprise why you didn’t get short-listed for CEO
brent3000
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:57 PMStill waiting for 2012 March when my area is due to have upgrades completed…
So currently, nothing major has been improved in my area…
Rob
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 1:12 PMI live in Darwin, I work in the CBD of Darwin and the northern suburbs of Darwin, right now im my office I have 1 bar, VF told me I will notice improvements in the first week of Nov, what a load of crap!! Already in the second week of Nov and nothing has changed. I am so moving over to Telstra at the end of my contract. I have had enough of constant call drop out BS.
Greg
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 2:49 PMIt’s laughable that Vodafone still have any customers left 18 months on after their network meltdown started.
Seriously.
YC
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:51 PMVodafone has improved from unable to make or receive calls to unable to make or receive calls during peak hour/day especially at major shopping centres.
Mobile internet has improved from 0.01mbs to 0.5mbs on average.
Ernest
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 12:56 AMVodafone data in Perth is useless. Does not work in my suburb with good signal, does not work on the train, does not work in the cbd.
Mikehunt
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 10:04 AMBeen with voda for years and Data in Melbourne can go from nonexistent to poor – sufficient to stream podcasts most of the time on iphone 4 but I will be moving to Telstra when iphone 5 comes out so long as their handset charges aren’t prohibitive
Andrew
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 3:36 PMVodafail still! In Perth data speeds are terrible, only some extra signal bars in some areas, constant “Are you there….Hello???”, other things like don’t receive Voicemail notifications or worse no Voicemail at all!!!, etc, etc, etc. So not good for business use :( Lucky I made an agreement that if service levels hadn’t improved that I could cancel….and I sure will!
Edmond
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 11:48 PMI have a iPhone on Telstra, and a company issued blackberry on Vodafone. The Vodafone service is a constant source of frustration due to constant drop outs. Sydney is bad, Melbourne is really bad. I travel heaps and just can’t rely on the service. Constant drop outs are now at laughing point at work. We ditched voda for 3G, so I now have a Telstra device that works perfect!
Jack Cola
Saturday, November 26, 2011 at 6:58 PMHow many sites in total does vodafone have? 8000 seems a lot, but what % of total sites is that?