Vodacom Network Problems

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vodacom3g

Vodacom Representative
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Firstly, apologies for only posting this now, was out of the office all day.

By now, a lot of you would have noticed serious network performance problems on both the GPRS and 3G networks. Throughput is very low and sometimes you can't access anything.

To say every man and his dog is running around trying to resolve this is an understatement of note.

It seems to have started last night, came right once or twice (after certain actions) but keeps reappearing.

I'll keep you posted as frequently as possible.

The problem is very erratic, making it difficult to diagnose and fix.

If you would like to help (PM me), the following information could be helpful:

1) Your datacard model. (Option with 2 LEDS or Novatel with 1).
2) Did you connect on GPRS (green) or 3G (blue)?
3) Your IP address? (open a DOS box and type in 'ipconfig'). If you're on the internet APN it should be 10.something.
4) Your throughput?
5) Connection stability?
6) When did you first notice the problem?
 
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vodacom3g said:
Firstly, apologies for only posting this now, was out of the office all day.

By now, a lot of you would have noticed serious network performance problems on both the GPRS and 3G networks. Throughput is very low and sometimes you can't access anything.

To say every man and his dog is running around trying to resolve this is an understatement of note.

It seems to have started last night, came right once or twice (after certain actions) but keeps reappearing.

I'll keep you posted as frequenly as possible.

The problem is very erratic, making it difficult to diagnose and fix.

If you would like to help (PM me), the following information could be helpfull:

1) Your datacard model. (Option with 2 LEDS or Novatel with 1).
2) Did you connect on GPRS (green) or 3G (blue)?
3) Your IP address? (open a DOS box and type in 'ipconfig'). If you're on the internet APN it should be 10.something.
4) Your throughput?
5) Connection stability?
6) When did you first notice the problem?
Click to expand...



I have this problem with one base station where i live for over 1 month.I pm you about this problem 3 times but no help.Customer care 082111 is also a waste of time.NO HELP
 
V3g thanks for this forum - we debate not break down but to build up - we need serious people to resolve the bandwith and connectivity problem in SA - lets work with openess and honesty and define the problem instead of acknowledging that there is a problem.
 
Tahir Ally said:
I have this problem with one base station where i live for over 1 month.I pm you about this problem 3 times but no help.Customer care 082111 is also a waste of time.NO HELP
Click to expand...

I can only apologize. Was pretty sure I sent your request on.

Won't you PM me an e-mail, I can get the KZN guys to make direct contact with you. They'll sort you pronto.
 
Though I'm making my complaints heard, I want 3G so I'm prepared to go along with some growing pains ... but not for long.

(Damn, it's hard to even get a message posted here.)
 
1) Your datacard model. (Option with 2 LEDS or Novatel with 1).

Novatel U630 with version 14 firmware.

2) Did you connect on GPRS (green) or 3G (blue)?

3G

3) Your IP address? (open a DOS box and type in 'ipconfig'). If you're on the internet APN it should be 10.something.

196.46.161.244

4) Your throughput?

What throughput?

5) Connection stability?

Couple of disconnects today, but that's normal.

6) When did you first notice the problem?

For some time. Months actually. But worse today. I thought it's the weather.

(See, I still have a sense of humour.)
 
For me the network has been great since my tower was sorted (8 months ago).
Today the first major problems (v3g dont let the techies let the side down)
 
V3G: smtp.vodacom.co.za down again. I did get a message sent to it at 17:04 and it hasn't arrived yet (18:54). Must I assume all mail sent to smtp.vodacom.co.za has been lost?

ic: my regular disconnects assures my security ;) Read the info to the end, I don't think it's going to help much.
 
I'm beginning to think: conspiracy :(

First, network problems everywhere.
Now the smtp server won't stay up for longer than a few minutes.
Just now all power in Midrand was lost and the gennies didn't kick in.

What next? A nuclear attack?

PS. Biometrics, the guys are debugging why smtp.vodacom.co.za won't stay up. The (SUN) server never had a stability problem. Config (apn not configured) and disk space (too little) issues, but not stability.
 
Hmm, This whole problem seems to be affecting quite a bit of Vodacom services. VodacomSP's Vodasurf application servers are also down
 
vodacom3g said:
debugging why smtp.vodacom.co.za won't stay up. The (SUN) server never had a stability problem. Config (apn not configured) and disk space (too little) issues, but not stability.
Click to expand...

If I were the manager in charge of this lot I would:
1) Get a program on my pc that monitors the availability of SMTP so at least clients don't need to tell me its down. And while I am about it I would also monitor a few other things and look at getting the server to alert me when its disk gets to 95% full.
2) Install a bigger disk on the Sun server
3) See why my Sysadmin is not on top of this (he must either be to busy or not know his stuff, so I probably need to hire an extra Sun Sysadmin either way)
4) Consider installing a 2nd smtp server with load balancing and fail over
5) Claim costs for all above from Customer support and market dept since customers are now very much happier and calling in less and recommending Vodacom to their friends :)


There, free advice!
 
ic said:
v3g, thanks for this thread, forumites hopefully appreciate that Vodacom publically acknowledges that there is a serious problem, and that every effort is being made to resolve the problem :).
Click to expand...

Yes it is great :D , but hell is there not a better way to inform it's customers about problems like this. How about a friendly e-mail/SMS or a status report on the Vodacom website? :eek:
 
V3G a personal question? are you a one man show or is it a panel that look after all these problems. What control is there to ensure that the right people get all these queries?
 
Hope I get this right:

- Vodacom has a very large (>1000 people) Customer Care section (111) that takes calls from all subscribers.
- A subset of Customer Care (155) looks after data queries specifically.
- If they can't resolve an issue, it get passed to another group, the Data Help Desk.
- If someone needs to make physical contact with a data subscriber, you'll be contacted by a group called Mobile Data Services. They're also the guys that man the Data walk-in centres.

All the above people are there to take your calls, own them and either resolve directly or make sure it gets resolved.

In addition, there is a group working in the Network Management Centre, monitoring the network via various tools 24x7. They handle around 1 million network events / day!

If you have a radio-related problem, every region has a support group that will look into your problem and come and visit you to resolve. A lot of forumites have met these guys. They're the guys that will fix tower-related problems.

A large Engineering department looks after all the 'centralised' systems such as the transmission networks, the servers, etc.

From the above you can see there's a massive support structure in place to ensure your services are up and work the way they should.

When Vodacom joined the myADSL forum, I became involved to funnel any requests, suggestions and general information into the relevant internal structures.

The 'official' support channel will always be 155, thus my perpetual request to use it as much as possible.

So in a sense, I am a one-man show, but I'm a myADSL-dedicated one-man show. :) I don't do any other support aside from the forum and (like most forumites) I spend way too much time in front of a screen (but not anything like ic, I must say!), so I'm always close to a WEB browser.

Btw, it actually seldom happens that we open a new trouble ticket from the forum. For example, early this morning we had around 5 reports on the forum on the network problems. By that time we already had ~35 calls on 155, so the guys were already working on it, from about 1am this morning.
 
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Network seems ok now. Even got my test email back, yay.

So back to my original complaints ... ;)
 
Thanks for this info, pretty what I expected
I agree I also spend far to much time on this forum, but if Vodacom is not resolving the problems, and at this time they must know the extent of the problems :confused: They need more people or more bandwith
The bottomline is the bandwith cannot handle the traffic :eek:


vodacom3g said:
Hope I get this right:

- Vodacom has a very large (>1000 people) Customer Care section (111) that takes calls from all subscribers.
- A subset of Customer Care (155) looks after data queries specifically.
- If they can't resolve an issue, it get passed to another group, the Data Help Desk.
- If someone needs to make physical contact with a data subscriber, you'll be contacted by a group called Mobile Data Services. They're also the guys that man the Data walk-in centres.

All the above people are there to take your calls, own them and either resolve directly or make sure it gets resolved.

In addition, there is a group working in the Network Management Centre, monitoring the network via various tools 24x7. They handle around 1 million network events / day!

If you have a radio-related problem, every region has a support group that will look into your problem and come and visit you to resolve. A lot of forumites have met these guys. They're the guys that will fix tower-related problems.

A large Engineering department looks after all the 'centralised' systems such as the transmission networks, the servers, etc.

From the above you can see there's a massive support structure in place to ensure your services are up and work the way they should.

When Vodacom joined the myADSL forum, I became involved to funnel any requests, suggestions and general information into the relevant internal structures.

The 'official' support channel will always be 155, thus my perpetual request to use it as much as possible.

So in a sense, I am a one-man show, but I'm a myADSL-dedicated one-man show. :) I don't do any other support aside from the forum and (like most forumites) I spend way too much time in front of a screen (but not anything like ic, I must say!), so I'm always close to a WEB browser.

Btw, it actually seldom happens that we open a new trouble ticket from the forum. For example, early this morning we had around 5 reports on the forum on the network problems. By that time we already had ~35 calls on 155, so the guys were already working on it, from about 1am this morning.
Click to expand...
 
V3G I presume all the staff is paid a monthly salary - well I am not, so with slow connectivity I am loosing money, and I know this is not your problem, but atleast in this forum we can get rid of all the frustration:)
 
Vodacom3G

Just wanted to thank you for all the effort and help you give to us forumites.

Had to go back to dial up yesterday :mad: , what scares me is with all the technology and money Vodacom has, the planning and infrastructure is so bad.

I have pm'd you a few times to no avail.
 
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