Roaming in Australia unavailable

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#102587 2-Jan-2008 18:52

PenultimateHop: Paul,

Can you tell us whether VFNZ enforces any kind of SLA on their roaming partners? In most voice interconnect and IP interconnect relationships between major carriers there are definite SLAs, so I'd like to hear what's happening with these and what VFAU is planning on doing to rectify the issue (and perhaps for VFNZ to ensure there's adequate capacity)...

Hi there,

Sorry, I have no idea what SLAs are like with roaming partners for Vodafone Australia. I can tell you they received more than double the international traffic they were expecting, which was clearly beyond the capacity on offer. Optus says they can provision more capacity tomorrow ... which is a bit too late really. Beyond that, I can't tell you what Vodafone Australia plans to do for next year.

And just to reiterate: Vodafone NZ did not have this problem. Yes, we had some congestion issues (between 10pm on New Year's Eve and 2am on New Year's Day 13.5 million TXTs were sent on the Vodafone network) but overall we did not get the hit on international roaming traffic that Vodafone Australia had.

Cheers

Paul

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#102588 2-Jan-2008 18:54

PaulBrislen:
Vodafone NZ customers can switch to another Australian network and should be able to receive service on those (barring any issues those other networks are experiencing). The new roaming package offered by Vodafone NZ means that every network in Australia is treated the same from a billing perspective, so roaming onto one of the other networks won't cost Traveller roamers more than roaming on Vodafone Australia.

Maybe it would be a nice gesture from Vodafone to at least compensate customers who have had to roam on other networks by crediting them back the difference between the Telstra/Optus/3 rate and the Vodafone rate. Not everybody wants Traveller and actually activating Traveller while roaming is virtually impossible anyway since there has been no easy way of contacting customer service. I'm sure most people won't be aware of the issues involved and couldn't care less what the cause is - they're just annoyed their phone doesn't work. I don't think people should automatically get compensation when their phone doesn't go but those who have incurred extra costs (such as roaming on Telstra) should be receiving compensation as a goodwill gesture.

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#102589 2-Jan-2008 19:02

sbiddle:
PaulBrislen:
Vodafone NZ customers can switch to another Australian network and should be able to receive service on those (barring any issues those other networks are experiencing). The new roaming package offered by Vodafone NZ means that every network in Australia is treated the same from a billing perspective, so roaming onto one of the other networks won't cost Traveller roamers more than roaming on Vodafone Australia.

Maybe it would be a nice gesture from Vodafone to at least compensate customers who have had to roam on other networks by crediting them back the difference between the Telstra/Optus/3 rate and the Vodafone rate. Not everybody wants Traveller and actually activating Traveller while roaming is virtually impossible anyway since there has been no easy way of contacting customer service. I'm sure most people won't be aware of the issues involved and couldn't care less what the cause is - they're just annoyed their phone doesn't work. I don't think people should automatically get compensation when their phone doesn't go but those who have incurred extra costs (such as roaming on Telstra) should be receiving compensation as a goodwill gesture.

We deal with all issues like that on a case-by-case basis. Anyone affected is welcome to call in and we'll work with them to sort it out .

Cheers

Paul

EDIT: too many issues for one post. Stupid brain. This is what I get for blogging while watching The Simpsons.

Paul Brislen
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Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

PenultimateHop

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#102591 2-Jan-2008 19:12

PaulBrislen: Sorry, I have no idea what SLAs are like with roaming partners for Vodafone Australia. I can tell you they received more than double the international traffic they were expecting, which was clearly beyond the capacity on offer. Optus says they can provision more capacity tomorrow ... which is a bit too late really. Beyond that, I can't tell you what Vodafone Australia plans to do for next year.

Paul,

Thanks for your response, but my question was specifically about VFNZ roaming partners that are not performing. In this case, that would be VFAU.

brad_p: Well if you took the percentage of days roaming has working vs. the days it hasn't since VF started in NZ i'm sure you would find the percentages a bit different.

That's generally not how SLA availability measurements are calculated. They are usually a yearly or monthly basis.

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#102592 2-Jan-2008 19:13

PaulBrislen:

Sorry, I have no idea what SLAs are like with roaming partners for Vodafone Australia.
...
And just to reiterate: Vodafone NZ did not have this problem.

Hopefully someone in the contact centres would know because unlike being in NZ, you aren't going to be in the country for very long and being able to use your mobile is very nice. The duration of the issue was rather significant given the impact of the issue.

Are you referring to the VFNZ network on new years day or VFNZs stance about the VFAU network? If it was to the later, the comments uttered earlier still stand about taking ownership (as they are VFNZ's customers and VFAU is simply a roaming partner).

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#102594 2-Jan-2008 19:22

PenultimateHop:
brad_p: Well if you took the percentage of days roaming has working vs. the days it hasn't since VF started in NZ i'm sure you would find the percentages a bit different.
That's generally not how SLA availability measurements are calculated. They are usually a yearly or monthly basis.

Though if you wanted to make statistics like 'Every year that Labour/Bush/Howard has been in, there have been road deaths'... that methodology is fine :P

(SLA should be daily/weekly/monthly/yearly, not since we started)

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#102604 2-Jan-2008 21:18

cokemaster:
PenultimateHop:
brad_p: Well if you took the percentage of days roaming has working vs. the days it hasn't since VF started in NZ i'm sure you would find the percentages a bit different.
That's generally not how SLA availability measurements are calculated. They are usually a yearly or monthly basis.

Though if you wanted to make statistics like 'Every year that Labour/Bush/Howard has been in, there have been road deaths'... that methodology is fine :P

(SLA should be daily/weekly/monthly/yearly, not since we started)

Was just pointing out how a lot more often then not everything goes fine. Of course I understand when you join a company for a service you expect that service to perform but still in the grand scheme of things this isn't really a major outage as you could just change networks and your phone would (should?) work as per normal.

Ohh.... I just had a thought, perhaps VFNZ planned this whole thing just so people will sign up to VF Traveller ;-P

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#102607 2-Jan-2008 21:23

Did any of you try and use Telstra/Optus to roam in AU? I know plenty of people who were fine using Telstra. Thats one of the benefits of putting yourself on VF Traveller, same charge no matter what network

UMM, Thats is one of the first things I tried as I'm sure most did - was to connect to another network, When you do all you get is NO NETWORK even though the phone can see the other 3 - Optus, Telstra and Three.
when i couldn't I rang VFONE-NZ to get switched onto traveller (as I can't txt out- I tried txting to get it on) to be told that switching to traveller wouldn't make the slightest difference as the roaming network was completely down in AU.

BTW
One thing I have to say, You don't really realize how inconvenient and frustrating this is until you have experienced it yourself for almost 9 days now and once you do you will know what we mean !

Your phone keeps going flat as it is constantly trying to reconnect and I have tried many times each day to fix it manually changing to other networks. Just shows you how much we rely on a working mobile doesn't it ...

If I had of realised it was going to take this long I would've bought another VF-AU sim, but you hope inside that it is going to come up any minute as its hard to believe you can get no network at all, If its congested and your phone is on, surely you have chance of connecting sometimes, but then I could always win Lotto as well I guess

BTW, the Vfone-NZ help desk staff have been great, each time I have talked to them and have been very helpfull, but like they say each time there is nothing they can do as the problem is in AU not NZ. I take my hat off to them for remaining polite as they must be getting a lot of calls from disgruntled roamers !

Anyway, we are going back to NZ in 2 days so I have turned the phone off and are back in holiday mode again

Happy New Year !!

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#102609 2-Jan-2008 21:28

If you used a VFAU sim and were texting/calling back to NZ wouldn't you still have the same problem since it's VFAU's network that is congested?

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#102614 2-Jan-2008 22:24

Is is just me, or does this congestion thing not sit right.....

Let me hypothesize.......

Lets say 1% of NZ is on VF roaming in Auzzie.... (yes I know the rest of the world would be roaming there too, but lets try and put a number on it...) 40,000 kiwis, 200,000 from the rest of the world ?

OK 250,000 people roaming on VFAU, for the week over Christmas.

Now lets say the average conversation between a cellphone and it's home network is something like...

1. Hello, Hello, VFNZ Home are you there?
2. Yup whos this?
3. It's me +6421xxxxxxx
4. OK, Where are you.
5. Im in Auzzie
6. OK, I'll divert your calls there whats your IMEI?
7. it's XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
8. OK Thanks

Thats gotta be about 1kb of data?

So for 250,000 people thats 250,000 X 1000 = 250,000,000 (250 megabytes of Data !)

Now lets assume that the phones all ping home every hour, with 500 bytes of "i'm still alive" data

Thats another 125mb's each hour.

Now lets assume that all 250,000 people transfer 50 texts on Christmas day (25 in and 25 out) at 80c each thats 250,000 X 25 X 80 = $5,000,000 (or is it still 20c?)

The text is 160 bytes + some overhead, lets double it and call it 320 bytes.

So thats 320 bytes X 50 messages X 250,000 = 4,000,000,000 (4 GB)

Phones that are not making calls (most roaming phones on VF Auzzie), are not using any voice data, so I have not factored this in.

It seems to me that the phones ability to stay on the network and send texts is NOT a data intensive exersize, so the capacity argument seems like it could be a little flawed. Why for the sake of a few hundred megs of data, heck, multiply my figures by ten, for a few GIGs of data per day, are these phones not able to roam?

Ah, I know, maybe VFAU has been scaled back to dial-up speeds for going over their data cap?

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#102615 2-Jan-2008 22:29

There are no doubt other factors involved, such as systems allow roaming customers to connect, text messaging roaming etc.

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#102623 2-Jan-2008 23:47

brad_p: If you used a VFAU sim and were texting/calling back to NZ wouldn't you still have the same problem since it's VFAU's network that is congested?

Ahh, no..
That works fine. My son here in brisbane has a VFAU sim in his phone and it has been able to call NZ the whole time ..
Strange if there is congestion isn't it ..

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#102630 3-Jan-2008 06:39

This has been going on for a while, and seems to be a Vodafone authentication issue. I was visiting NZ from the UK back in the NZ spring, and roaming was unavailable for at least half the time. Vodafone blamed 'software upgrades'.

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#102635 3-Jan-2008 07:58

WOW!!

GZ hits the Herald again

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#102644 3-Jan-2008 09:20

I find it quite disappointing that the finger pointing is still going on. At the end of the day, customers (I have a vodafone connection) do not care what brand of cellsite or who the international provider is - all they care is whether they get service.

This "Its not our [vodafones] fault, its optuses fault" is really going low. Really, is it to hard to say "Our roaming partner, Vodafone Austrialia has not purchased/got enough international bandwidth to service all our roaming customers and they are unable to purchase more"? That sounds so much better as its not saying "Its not our fault!", while Vodafone could have purchased additional bandwidth before things really turned to custard.

Customers shouldn't be left in the cold with things like "Oh its Vodafones AU fault", "Oh, its Optuses fault"... as what can they do? Call Optus? Instead they should be taking ownership, logging these calls, talking to the operator/parties involved to try and get this issue resolved. If they aren't - they should be advising people to use alternative networks. The fact that network having issues has "Vodafone" in it, should be even more incentive to try and get things right...

In any case, it is with some amusement that I quote:
"Vodafone's problems weren't just confined to this side of the Tasman either -- reports have also come in of text messages going into several hours of hibernation over New Year's Eve before being delivered, in some parts of New Zealand."
Quite amusing, considering the effects seen in this thread to clean VFNZ from having any issues.

Yet again, the theme in this thread was "But it isn't our fault, its their fault!". I end this post with "Well, whos customers are they? And who do they pay? Vodafone NZ, Vodafone AU, or Optus?"

Its a really simple concept.

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