Vodacom Mobile security concerns

[kaspaas]

Thanks and congrats to V3G for the amount of flack he has taken.

And thanks for not vanishing into thin air when the going gets tough!

Some of us do notice such heroic behaviour!

 

[milomak]

He's no Shaun Green for sure

 

[kaspaas]

A suggestion:

Take the system down for a week apologising for bad comminication etc in the best of VC Dot Field style.

During the week - fix the known problems, give voluntary access to people (a freebie on the bandwidth will generate a number of volunteers)

AND COMMUNICATE properly.


I doubt if more than a week is required to fix the technical and communication errors that exist.

 

[Turiko]

To be quite honest, you're completely out of your depth here.

I know you stated before you can run a Telco (with half a brain cell) but one of the things any responsible company do is not to fire from the hip when it comes to issuing press statements. I would suspect as a CEO-in-waiting (having handled a R100M in the past), you'd understand this.

Unlike the company you represent:

1) I am NOT greedy beyond belief nor do I make money on the back of the underdog
2) I don't force things down people's throats. What your company did would have meant corporate suicide in any other country but this is SA so you get away with it.
3) I don't offer a overpriced service that is only 64% reliable (full of dropped calls, delayed SMSes, errors and other anomalies) and claim it is the best thing since sliced bread.
3) I hate the company you represent for a good reason and then some.
4) I make sure things work 1000% before I even dream of putting them out, and even so I do a beta run with selected testers and other interested parties.

I am not a CEO in waiting, I just happen to work on consumer electronic projects that have large capital investments in them.

[/rant off] [back onto topic]

 

[vodacom3g]

+1, but they won't admit anything.

I normally don't bother with your posts as they always are as inaccurate and slanderous toward Vodacom as you can make them. Furthermore, your habit to personally threaten me when I point out your incorrect posts made me decide to not respond to your baiting.

But, here goes again;

I suggest you go through the many posts I made on this topic on this forum and count how many times I admitted we underestimated the complexity of doing CA and pretty much botched the implementation.

In addition, nearly everything this forum suggested was, in fact, done, including turning the thing off for those handsets that don't need it and re-looking at the architecture.

 

[vodacom3g]

Unlike the company you represent:

1) I am NOT greedy beyond belief nor do I make money on the back of the underdog
2) I don't force things down people's throats. What your company did would have meant corporate suicide in any other country but this is SA so you get away with it.
3) I don't offer a overpriced service that is only 64% reliable (full of dropped calls, delayed SMSes, errors and other anomalies) and claim it is the best thing since sliced bread.

Glad to hear you give every spare cent to charity and are not interested in making a profit in your business

BTW, I've asked you more than once to PM me the details of the coverage problems you have, but so far I've not receive any response from you. I can only assume you don't want it attended.

3) I hate the company you represent for a good reason and then some.

Scary to think you HATE anything or anyone.

By all means disagree and have your own opinions, that's cool, it's your right as an indivdual. But to HATE something, it's just destructive.

4) I make sure things work 1000% before I even dream of putting them out, and even so I do a beta run with selected testers and other interested parties.

Glad to hear there's one engineer out there who's perfect, working with perfect technology. Here, on planet Earth, we deal with humans and technologies made by humans. So we (the humans, that is) do tend to stuff it up from time to time.

I am not a CEO in waiting, I just happen to work on consumer electronic projects that have large capital investments in them.

Sorry, my mistake. You did indicate in another thread that you can run a large corporation (with half a brain cell) and could not understand why CEO's get the big money. I obviously misread it that you had CEO aspirations.

 

[pkid]

Sigh. There must be much stress at Vodacom these days thanks to this mix up...

 

[pkid]

+1, but no need to shoot the messengers eh!. They stuffed up, so fire them. That's what would have happened to me on a live system in Europe. Even a simple error that was fixable, which occured on a live system had me in the beeg beeg boss's office for a roasting. Why are things so lax here?? It's not as if similar things haven't happened before

I don't quite think that it is that bad. Vodacom are pretty reliable and they made a mistake. Everyone does...If you are going to fire everyone who makes a mistake soon you will have nobody left in your company. Learn from them and don't make them again and everyone gets better...

 

[efons]

Did Vodacom RIP Off Some one's idea?

A year ago Vodacom was presented with a unit called Pocket Surfer. They kept the unit for 6 month or so and returned it. Now what is really amazing is that the new (or ripped off technolgy from datawind) does the same thing minus the sercurity that was in place with datawind tecnology. Any good lawers out there?

 

[LabAnimal]

While the vast majority of the people on this forum are included in the 'we', it's still a much smaller % of the total handset base that can use this service.

So while you want to get rid of it, we are getting very positive user responses coming back.

The right answer would have been to have an Opt-out option from day 1 and we're building it. Until then, most handsets (if not all) that don't need CA have it turned off, i.e. you ARE rid of it.

The total subscriber base not on this forum either don't have a clue how to use the internet on their phone, use their device fully, lacks a decent handset, or they don't care because they're either too clueless to use the internet, or they know its just too expensive to surf online using a cellphone!. I bet you the amount of compliments and positive feedback is nowhere near a quarter of your subscriber base! Either way, I disagree with vodacom to force settings on the general public. The public should have the final say if they want their browser optimized or not. It should never be a OPT-Out, a 'take it and shurrup' scenario, it must always be an OPT-In!

It however would be interesting to have a poll regarding this - to see how many people embraces it, and those that wants it removed or made opt-in apposed to opt-out!