TigerTael
Well-Known Member
I know what you're all thinking:
"Oh no, not another unhappy Vodacom customer."
Suffice it to say, it has to be said.
I have been using GPRS since its inception on the Vodacom and MTN networks. While it may have been expensive at the time, it was reliable. I was happy with my speeds and had no connectivity issues. Then came the huge price drop by Vodacom. My experience of the GPRS service fell sharply. I was getting very slow response times, the DNS servers were so dodgy, one minute I'd be able to resolve an address, the next minute I couldn't get anything. Tracerouting, pinging, nslookups and the like. So, I decided to try MTN. Similarly, MTN dropped its prices on its GPRS charges too not shortly after Vodacom. When I first switched to MTN, their service was what Vodacoms used to be, good. Then a month went by, the service deteriorated.
I'm not sure if this was because the tower was saturated with data requests, or upgraded and now configured incorrectly or what. You can't blame my signal. At my house, I have all full bars on my GPRS. Recently, I thought that perhaps upgrading to 3G would be my answer.
Get this... I have 5 bars on my 3G reception meter, but low and behold, I get service that compares to the GPRS performance I get. Now, I have read this forum very carefully, and I'm not a 'noob' when it comes to cellphone data connections (I used to work in the USA for Sprint, where I tested their GPRS network security and the like). The sim card that I was originally sent with my Nokia 6680 is 32K. Being what it may, I decided to use that first and see what my performance was like. Very shoddy. So, today I ordered my 64K sim card, and it should be here in a few days. It better be, or I am going to be one pissed off tiger.
Now, my issues are of the DNS servers and slow speeds. Okay, forget about 3G... I need to know why my GPRS service is so terrible? I don't think it's just the tower, I think it's a whole congestion thing. At one stage on the MTN network, I couldn't connect at all! I tried over a hundred times. So I phone the call center, and eventually get it through to them that I didn't need the OTA settings for GPRS, and got them to respond to my question about the tower. I asked them if they were having problems. They asked me the tower name, I told them, and they said there were no problems in my area.
Shortly after that call ended, I tried to connect via GPRS again, and lo and behold, it worked, magically. I had been trying for hours, and then, all of a sudden after that phone call, the tower responds to my GPRS request? It's not the fact that I made a call, it's not the fact that the phone's state may have influenced it, since I restarted it several times. I created brand new GPRS connection settings, everything I could think of, I tried the OTA's to no avail.
The problem may well be the towers in my area, and I think they are most probably the cause of the problem.
This DNS server issue is definitely worrying. Why can't the DNS servers respond in time? I don't even think that's the issue, because I've used nslookup and set the timeout period manually, to no avail. It seems that sporadically, the data does not even reach the intended IP. As with sitting there hour after hour, you start to trace route stuff and try to find out where the problem lies.
I've had this happen to OTHER Ip's, where my tracerouting dies inside the Vodacom network. A packet never makes it out. It's not my PC, It's not my Phone, It's not a dumb user... it's a network problem. Don't come to me saying it's a windows problem, because I use both linux/unix and Windows operating systems, on two different machines, both set up to utilise a bluetooth connection with my phone(s). I've had several phones over the past few months.
DNS Is an issue. I do feel that response times are partly responsible, but I also feel there are connectivity issues inside the network.
What is disheartening, is the amount of complaints which can be attributed to this, which have been responded to by V3G, but yet, these problems still persist. That worries me. After all the complaints, and all this time... the problems are still around.
On a plus note, the Vodacom technicians, specifically in the 3G department are really helpful. We had a nice chat about the technologies and the like. Thanks for that great bit of customer service. I appreciate it.
"Oh no, not another unhappy Vodacom customer."
Suffice it to say, it has to be said.
I have been using GPRS since its inception on the Vodacom and MTN networks. While it may have been expensive at the time, it was reliable. I was happy with my speeds and had no connectivity issues. Then came the huge price drop by Vodacom. My experience of the GPRS service fell sharply. I was getting very slow response times, the DNS servers were so dodgy, one minute I'd be able to resolve an address, the next minute I couldn't get anything. Tracerouting, pinging, nslookups and the like. So, I decided to try MTN. Similarly, MTN dropped its prices on its GPRS charges too not shortly after Vodacom. When I first switched to MTN, their service was what Vodacoms used to be, good. Then a month went by, the service deteriorated.
I'm not sure if this was because the tower was saturated with data requests, or upgraded and now configured incorrectly or what. You can't blame my signal. At my house, I have all full bars on my GPRS. Recently, I thought that perhaps upgrading to 3G would be my answer.
Get this... I have 5 bars on my 3G reception meter, but low and behold, I get service that compares to the GPRS performance I get. Now, I have read this forum very carefully, and I'm not a 'noob' when it comes to cellphone data connections (I used to work in the USA for Sprint, where I tested their GPRS network security and the like). The sim card that I was originally sent with my Nokia 6680 is 32K. Being what it may, I decided to use that first and see what my performance was like. Very shoddy. So, today I ordered my 64K sim card, and it should be here in a few days. It better be, or I am going to be one pissed off tiger.
Now, my issues are of the DNS servers and slow speeds. Okay, forget about 3G... I need to know why my GPRS service is so terrible? I don't think it's just the tower, I think it's a whole congestion thing. At one stage on the MTN network, I couldn't connect at all! I tried over a hundred times. So I phone the call center, and eventually get it through to them that I didn't need the OTA settings for GPRS, and got them to respond to my question about the tower. I asked them if they were having problems. They asked me the tower name, I told them, and they said there were no problems in my area.
Shortly after that call ended, I tried to connect via GPRS again, and lo and behold, it worked, magically. I had been trying for hours, and then, all of a sudden after that phone call, the tower responds to my GPRS request? It's not the fact that I made a call, it's not the fact that the phone's state may have influenced it, since I restarted it several times. I created brand new GPRS connection settings, everything I could think of, I tried the OTA's to no avail.
The problem may well be the towers in my area, and I think they are most probably the cause of the problem.
This DNS server issue is definitely worrying. Why can't the DNS servers respond in time? I don't even think that's the issue, because I've used nslookup and set the timeout period manually, to no avail. It seems that sporadically, the data does not even reach the intended IP. As with sitting there hour after hour, you start to trace route stuff and try to find out where the problem lies.
I've had this happen to OTHER Ip's, where my tracerouting dies inside the Vodacom network. A packet never makes it out. It's not my PC, It's not my Phone, It's not a dumb user... it's a network problem. Don't come to me saying it's a windows problem, because I use both linux/unix and Windows operating systems, on two different machines, both set up to utilise a bluetooth connection with my phone(s). I've had several phones over the past few months.
DNS Is an issue. I do feel that response times are partly responsible, but I also feel there are connectivity issues inside the network.
What is disheartening, is the amount of complaints which can be attributed to this, which have been responded to by V3G, but yet, these problems still persist. That worries me. After all the complaints, and all this time... the problems are still around.
On a plus note, the Vodacom technicians, specifically in the 3G department are really helpful. We had a nice chat about the technologies and the like. Thanks for that great bit of customer service. I appreciate it.
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