Hi - I am new to this forum, hope it's an appropriate place to post this.

We live at the Manukau Heads (Wattle Bay, Awhitu) and have received rural broadband and calling (via the RBI initiative) from Vodafone since December 2013.  We had to have an aerial installed on our roof, and a Vodafone technician also installed a modem.  

Our wireless signal comes over the Manukau Harbour from the Waima cell tower in Titirangi (which is clearly visible from our home).  Reception has been good with average 10mps download.  

On Friday 30 October we received a text from Vodafone saying "we're upgrading the area near you, please bear with us as there may be a little disruption".  We understood that the Waima cell tower was being upgraded to enable 4G extended 700MhZ.  All good so far, (thanks for letting us know Vodafone). Sure enough the following week our service was mostly down.  Fair enough - we had warning - so we did not contact the Vodafone call centre. Unfortunately our Vodafone wireless service has remained mostly down (I am only able to post this by tethering my cellphone and using mobile data).  We have the occasional strong internet connection, but it soon (within minutes) drops off completely, to leave us with zero connectivity.  

As we run a business from home this is enormously frustrating to say the least.   We have phoned Vodafone callcentre on two occasions this past week (we were told by the first callcentre person we spoke to that we had to wait three days - until yesterday - to follow up the initial complaint).  Yesterday evening, after a 20 minute wait and then receiving no helpful information at all from our second Vodafone distress call, we were promised that an RBI expert would phone us back 'within 15 minutes'.  We are still waiting!  

In the meantime we are paying Vodafone $105 a month for this service and we have had two weeks, and immense frustration, without it. The Vodafone call centre people have assured us that the cell tower upgrade has now been completed, so that this cannot be the cause of our problem.  We are at a loss to know what to do next and would be most appreciative if anyone can help us out with knowledge of these issues.  It seems too much of a coincidence to think that what we are experiencing is not somehow connected with the cell tower upgrade. We are wondering if we have to have a new modem installed to cope with the 4G extended coverage?  A new aerial?  

We were assured by Vodafone (in August 2015) that our current modem copes with 4G, we asked as we have an iPad capable of 4G reception but it has never managed to receive this (always 3G). Anything at all that can help us resolve the real problems we are having would be VERY much appreciated.  :-)  

And thanks in advance for reading this saga!