My Dad is on 2 degrees, and for the most part its good, we got him a Android Phone for xmas so he can take advantage of the 600mb data of the $19data combo and be able to wifi tether to his Laptop from his holiday home in Whangamata.  Whangamata is not in the 2degrees Mobile Broadband Zone, but the local Vodafone Tower does it no problem, and given the 600mb is labelled as 'National 3G' this shouldn't be a problem.. right?.

Firstly I will say im on Vodafone, and was using 3G from the same location all over xmas, no problems at all.  With him, 3G would only work momentarily, for say 2-3 mins, then he was bumped off to the un-sexy 'E' on his data connection, otherwise known as 'EDGE GPRS' which was painfully slow.  Ideally I should have set  his phone to use 3G Networks only to see if it still done this, but either way id like to know what the story is.

Are Vodafone dumping 2 degrees customers to EDGE GPRS if the network has some level of congestion? Are 2 degrees mis-representing the National 3G Product?

Can anyone shed some light on this?