Voice Quality Issues

A

ambo

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I spent a week in Durban recently on business and while I was there the voice quality on my cell was awful. I thought there may be something wrong with the phone and was trying to figure out how I would get to a Vodashop. (never happened)

When I returned to JHB suddenly the voice quality was perfect again. This of course confused me - but i didn't complain.

Then out of the blue I have had a bunch of calls this week that have been so bad that on one occasion I did not even recognise my mother's voice... However I continue to have the occasional crystal clear call. I think I can safely rule out the handset as the problem.

We all know that all the providers are struggling with issues on capacity on their backhaul networks due to the inability of a certain Telskum to deliver on orders.

Some of my calls have been a complete loss due to the bad audio quality. My question is (@ v3g maybe) are VC adjusting their voice codecs to reduce overloading?
 
Is it a 3G|HSDPA phone? - make & model & firmware? - also if it is, try setting it to the equivalent of 3GOnly if there is such a setting available...
 
ambo said:
Nope - good old fashioned 2G GSM jobSE K750i - can't remember where to find the firmware version.
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Can you point to specific locations?

If a tower gets congested it can switch to half-rate and you'll hear a drop in quality.

But this has been around for quite a while so the fact that you're suddenly seeing it rather points to a potential handset issue.

I often think the manufacturers design these devices to break or go flaky after 2 years.....
 
vodacom3g said:
Can you point to specific locations?
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When I was in Durbs I was in and around the SunCoast Hotel & Casino complex. In JHB it has been around Braamfontein during the day IIRC.
vodacom3g said:
If a tower gets congested it can switch to half-rate and you'll hear a drop in quality.
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That what I was wondering. There do seem to be 2 distinct voice quality levels however it has never caused such noticeable problems before.
vodacom3g said:
I often think the manufacturers design these devices to break or go flaky after 2 years.....
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Its only just a year old but maybe a visit to my local Vodashop would not go amiss.

PS I've got a deadline in the morning - whats your excuse for being up so late... go to bed already :p
 
vodacom3g said:
Can you point to specific locations?

If a tower gets congested it can switch to half-rate and you'll hear a drop in quality.

But this has been around for quite a while so the fact that you're suddenly seeing it rather points to a potential handset issue.

I often think the manufacturers design these devices to break or go flaky after 2 years.....
Click to expand...
Yep, that's what I was thinking as well - either a automatic timeslot-congestion-driven switch from full rate to half-rate on the 2G network [ergo switching to 3G might have sorted it out], or something flakey with the handset.
 
i am using n95 and have the worst problem than ambo, on many occasions the other party can not even hear me at all, and when i switched the phone off and back on again then its fine again, and don't tell me its not vodacom's problem coz when i insert the mtn sim card in my n95 there is no problem at all, and how do u explain that? and also sometime my phone dont even read my sim card and when i tried the sim card on another phone it also cant read my voda sim card, and this sim card i got is only a month old!
 
tony2007sa said:
i am using n95 and have the worst problem than ambo, on many occasions the other party can not even hear me at all, and when i switched the phone off and back on again then its fine again, and don't tell me its not vodacom's problem coz when i insert the mtn sim card in my n95 there is no problem at all, and how do u explain that? and also sometime my phone dont even read my sim card and when i tried the sim card on another phone it also cant read my voda sim card, and this sim card i got is only a month old!
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For a start it sounds like your SIM card is damaged or defective.
 
but this sim card is only a month old, and this doesnt just happen once to all of my sim card, i had a sim replacement last year also, and same **** happened, phone not reading sim card, it looks like vodacom's sim card only last for 1-2 month, or it might just be that the vodacom network coverage is totally useless! their signal is always unstable!
 
tony2007sa said:
but this sim card is only a month old, and this doesnt just happen once to all of my sim card, i had a sim replacement last year also, and same **** happened, phone not reading sim card, it looks like vodacom's sim card only last for 1-2 month, or it might just be that the vodacom network coverage is totally useless! their signal is always unstable!
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You're right, they only last a month or two.

That's why we do between 200 and 400 million sim swaps a year and why you see thousands of complaints on the subject on this forum.....:rolleyes:

Anything new can break, even if it's only a month old, your PC, car, TV or even your SIM. Best to get it replaced and at the same time check the firmware on your handset.

I took my data sim out the other day and my iPhone would not read it. On closer inspection I saw the sim has two 'dents' in two of the contacts, obviously caused by some device I used at some point. Still works fine in the E220 though.

So, it's often a factor of the type of sim socket the manufacturer use.
 
tony2007sa said:
but this sim card is only a month old, and this doesnt just happen once to all of my sim card, i had a sim replacement last year also, and same **** happened, phone not reading sim card, it looks like vodacom's sim card only last for 1-2 month, or it might just be that the vodacom network coverage is totally useless! their signal is always unstable!
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One thing I've learnt is to avoid making assumptions, it's more constructive to make educated guesses. In a perfect world nothing would ever break or give problems, we don't live in a perfect world, **** happens and it is part of life.
 
vodacom3g said:
I took my data sim out the other day and my iPhone would not read it. On closer inspection I saw the sim has two 'dents' in two of the contacts, obviously caused by some device I used at some point. Still works fine in the E220 though.

So, it's often a factor of the type of sim socket the manufacturer use.
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Is your iPhone working on the Vodacom network? I know someone who brought two in and could not get them to work on Vodacom, but it happily works on the MTN network.
 
ic said:
One thing I've learnt is to avoid making assumptions, it's more constructive to make educated guesses. In a perfect world nothing would ever break or give problems, we don't live in a perfect world, **** happens and it is part of life.
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well, i am making educated guesses, can you not see im trying to reason things out here?? if you don't see it as being constructive from the evident i gave in my post then i don't know what that is, what annoys me is that sometimes when people can't explain about the problem they just blame it is been destructive, this country would do better if people actually admit and learn from their mistakes instead of arguing and denying responsibilities, until that happens you ll see less compaints mate.
 
tony2007sa said:
well, i am making educated guesses, can you not see im trying to reason things out here?? if you don't see it as being constructive from the evident i gave in my post then i don't know what that is, what annoys me is that sometimes when people can't explain about the problem they just blame it is been destructive, this country would do better if people actually admit and learn from their mistakes instead of arguing and denying responsibilities, until that happens you ll see less compaints mate.
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Based on your posts so far in this thread, I have to conclude that you are excellent at making uneducated guesses, and refusing to listen to the advice that is given to you bcos it does not fit with a guess that you have made.
 
vodacom3g said:
Working fine (now ;))

Was it Mark (or maybe James) by any chance?
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Nope. Was there anything special that you needed to do? He suspected that Vodacom bars certain IMEI number ranges, but I can't imagine why Vodacom would want to do that. Maybe he needs a newer SIM?
 
morkhans said:
Nope. Was there anything special that you needed to do? He suspected that Vodacom bars certain IMEI number ranges, but I can't imagine why Vodacom would want to do that. Maybe he needs a newer SIM?
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I'm pretty sure it'll work now without him having to do anything special. We tightened a few bolts on our side.

Please ask him to test again. And remind him NOT to upgrade to 1.1.1. :)
 
vodacom3g said:
I'm pretty sure it'll work now without him having to do anything special. We tightened a few bolts on our side.

Please ask him to test again. And remind him NOT to upgrade to 1.1.1. :)
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Cool thanks. I am pretty sure he is sticking to the old FW. I have dropped him a mail to try again (and also check his SIM). Might be that the iPhone is a bit more sensitive to worn/damaged SIMs.
 
tony2007sa said:
i am using n95 and have the worst problem than ambo, on many occasions the other party can not even hear me at all, and when i switched the phone off and back on again then its fine again, and don't tell me its not vodacom's problem coz when i insert the mtn sim card in my n95 there is no problem at all, and how do u explain that?
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That's not a Vodacom problem at all, it's a problem with the older N95 firmware. Besides switching the phone off and on again, you can also switch it to speakerphone and back to handset again to temporarily fix the problem.

Head over to the Nokia Software Update site and upgrade your firmware, be warned it is a little over a 100MB download though.
 
ic said:
Based on your posts so far in this thread, I have to conclude that you are excellent at making uneducated guesses, and refusing to listen to the advice that is given to you bcos it does not fit with a guess that you have made.
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advice? so far, i can not see any constructive advice from you beside your uneducated responses, i think you are just denying and blame peple making uneducated guesses whereas the fact is that you simply just don't want to accept the complaint!

Like i said in my previous post when the problem occurs i tried to use other phone to test if the problem is on my phone or on sim card, and it showed that the problem is not on n95, 2ndly this problem has happened to my previous sim cards as well, same problem occured after 2 month, because of this problem i had to do sim swop for almost every 2 month!
3rdly, i am not the only one here complaning about the network problem.

so i don't understand your logic of making "uneducated guesses" coz i "explained" so "clearly" in my previous post. My conclusion is that either you don't read before you post or you just put all complaints into one "uneducated guess" catagory, instead of solving the problem, and this kind of attitude just make me laugh.
 
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