No 3G Coverage, bad service!

rustyw

rustyw

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Kleinmond
Its been about 6 months since I got my 3G card installed, after numerous calls to Vodacom they still cannot give me a roll-out date for 3G in Bettys Bay and Pringle Bay in the Western Cape. I have probably phoned about 10 or more times in total with been passed from one person to another until eventually no returned call from the 'right person'.

Using GPRS could have been fine if it was not so unstable. Eventually thinking it might be the upgraded Firmware Options card that crashes regularly (does the green - blue light flicker crashing thing) I connected my Motorolla gprs enabled phone to a completely different computer and it did exactly the same thing, and even crashed twice.

Data would start and at any given time, stop, throughout the day everyday. Not nessasarely disconnecting me, just end of data, then some 10-50 minutes later after connecting and disconnecting it would start again.

I then got my 3G card working on my Linux Red-Hat box Fedora 4 but still, unstable connection, exactly the same story.

I am now logging my connection every day, and it does not look good! Will be happy to show log file.

I have 100% signal strength and can see the basestation from my house, but unfortunately to far to throw rocks at it.

I'm getting sick of this cr@p!!!! I'm paying 3G money for a unstable GPRS connection, and Vodacom will not give me a date when they installing 3G!!

I even once had someone at Vodacom tell me that it was not on the cards for this financial year!!!!!!

HELP!!!!

Disgruntled Customer
 
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rustyw, please PM me your contact details, numbers, address, etc. and I'll get the Western Cape Radio guys to come and look at your GPRS problem.

There are no short-term plans for 3G in the area but I'll check the GPRS coding scheme and availability of EDGE.
 
Its been about 6 months since I got my 3G card installed
Click to expand...

...i hope you didn't "install" 3G knowing you have no reception? I guess your GPRS issues are valid, but isn't one suppose to first ensure 3G coverage and then actually buy a card?
 
getting my wires crossed

Hi D. I did buy the 3G card in the great hope that Vodacom were going to cover all areas very quickly, but as I said, gprs would be fine (kind of) if only it were stable!

I cant get ADSL out here, and our phone lines you only reach 14000 baud on a standard modem and ISDN is expensive and Telkom said there are no phone lines left to give and have no plans to upgrade the exchange :eek:

What can a man do?

Rusty
 
If your base station has Edge then you'll be able to get 80 Kbps even though the datacard doesn't support Edge. Not sure about the Option card but that is the case for the Novatel. Anyway that is what they claim, I haven't tried it yet. I found this out when enquiring about 3G coverage in Ladismith. It doesn't have 3G but it does have Edge.

On another topic, I had to download a 100 MB file last night. The laptop was in the same position all night and I'm using an external antenna. The average throughput was around 4-5 KBps. At times it will increase to 15 KBps and then over 20-30 seconds go down to 0.1 KBps and up to 4-5 KBps again. After 10 minutes it would do this again. At one stage I got 35 KBps for a few minutes. Clearly things aren't right ... I appears to me that there is limited bandwidth available in Melkbos and that I'm competing with other users for said bandwidth ... It would be better if I can get a constant level rather than this up and down crap. 0.1 KBps ... using a pigeon to drop a CD from the US would be faster than this! Oh and I do have so called 3G coverage. Not much help is it ...
 
Edge

vodacom3g said:
rustyw, please PM me your contact details, numbers, address, etc. and I'll get the Western Cape Radio guys to come and look at your GPRS problem.

There are no short-term plans for 3G in the area but I'll check the GPRS coding scheme and availability of EDGE.
Click to expand...

Vodacom3G, I am currently a MTN subscriber and I am looking to switch to Vodacom, only if the network has 3G,EDGE and GPRS capability. The MTN guys keep on talking about their EDGE capability, as you have stated above, you do have EDGE capability, is this true and is EDGE on most of the metro areas ?
 
xssnet said:
Vodacom3G, I am currently a MTN subscriber and I am looking to switch to Vodacom, only if the network has 3G,EDGE and GPRS capability. The MTN guys keep on talking about their EDGE capability, as you have stated above, you do have EDGE capability, is this true and is EDGE on most of the metro areas ?
Click to expand...
Not wanting to step on v3g's toes, but this question has been asked & answered before on forum, if memory serves, Vodacom are concentrating much more on 3G compared to EDGE - especially with the HSDPA extension to 3G around December [2005], EDGE is an extension to GPRS, and as such is more doomed to live in the shadow of 3G/HSDPA...so yes Vodacom do have EDGE in some places, not everywhere, and I doubt that it is worthwhile to put EDGE everwhere when 3G is a much better investment for metro areas...

@ v3g, is that more or less correct? :)
 
Thanks, ic, pretty much on the mark.

xssnet, let me know your location and I'll check if you've got EDGE. The Western Cape is more saturated than the other regions.
 
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rustyw said:
Hi D. I did buy the 3G card in the great hope that Vodacom were going to cover all areas very quickly, but as I said, gprs would be fine (kind of) if only it were stable!

I cant get ADSL out here, and our phone lines you only reach 14000 baud on a standard modem and ISDN is expensive and Telkom said there are no phone lines left to give and have no plans to upgrade the exchange :eek:

What can a man do?

Rusty
Click to expand...

rustyw, I've PM'ed you but in case you don't see it: Will you please PM me an e-mail and your datacard SIM (cell) number. The guys want to run some traces on your data connection.
 
Same problem, same area, same bad service!

I stay in Betty's Bay and have experienced exactly the same problems as Rusty. I've had my 3G (Novatel) card for 5 months and tried numerous configurations to try and make it stable.

Have called 155 many times and was eventually promised that a wireless technician would come around, however a few days later I called again to find out when he would arrive only to be told that because there is no 3G in my area, that he decided not to come. And that without letting me know! :mad:

I looked into getting EDGE with MTN but no luck in Betty's Bay either.

What I can't understand is that Hawston/Hermanus which is on the other side of the bay has got 3G! Then on the other side of Betty's Bay we have Strand also with 3G coverage!

I work from home and am heavily reliant on an internet connection for business. Rusty, please let me know if you get any progress...

BB
 
BB3G, Please PM me your details:

Address
Contact numbers
Data Card Number
E-Mail

Rustyw, can you also send me an e-mail please?

We can get both your situations (probably the same issue) sorted at the same time.
 
Waiting patiently

I have refined my connection logging over the weekend to give stats every 5 minutes. So far, even after having a brilliant signal I still am getting packet loss, sometimes up to 30%, which of course I am paying for, sometimes no data return (100% loss).

I look forward to hearing from Vodacom, as thusfar, no call.

Will keep you posted!

Rusty
 
Progress!

Hi V3G, the wireless guy arrived as expected and we were able to determine that it may have something to do with my data card having problems.

Once he had setup his laptop and connection it seemed very stable and fast but on my system is was slow and somewhat unstable, even though my datacard had been tried on several different machines.

I will go through to Vodacom Customer Care and see if I can get another datacard.

Thanks for the good service!

Rusty
 
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