Have been having intermittent issues over the past several months with our Vodafone cable broadband. Specifically, the connection to the outside world would disappear for a while and then resume. Sometimes the outage period would be really short, making it look like a website was slow to load. Other times it would last for minutes or longer and the browser would come back with timeout or DNS issues. The trouble with intermittent problems of course is that they are hard to diagnose.

Over the same period our cable TV quality regarded badly - pixellation and patchy sound - but I just assumed that this was the dreaded T-box as that piece of junk has never been a stellar performer no matter how many replacements we've had. However, decided to roll the dice and put in for a service call and the message from the service technician was jaw-dropping: first the T-box is not able to be replaced and, secondly, apparently the (Vodafone-supplied) cable modem is DOCSIS 3 and is a bit dodgy on the current cable system since it has been moved to DOCSIS 3.5. Bottom line: the tech left having confirmed that the cable was sound, there were no issues that he could fix and that these issues were being seen by him frequently.

Had a wee korero with Vodafone to see how I get a different broadband modem and that was most unsatisfactory from my perspective. They were insistent that I re-sign for 1-2 years. I responded that as I had lost all faith in their ability to provide a stable and reliable service I was not willing to re-sign and that, given I'd been with them for well in excess of a decade, they should consider signing me up on a month-to-month basis as a means of keeping a loyal customer. They were happy to do that but I would have to pay the cost of installation - the amount was in excess of $200 so I said they were having a laugh and to get back to me if they wanted to make a more reasonable offer. Unsurprisingly I never heard back from them.

Long story short, I have cancelled the cable TV, ported my phone lines to VOIP with Hero, and am getting fibre installed (at which point I shall cancel the cable broadband). While I accept that there have been issues with fire installations, the reports I've had from this who I know with fibre is that they get reliable and fast performance. However, if I ever have issues with fibre I guess I can always crawl back to Vodafone and use the HFC offering - but at least once fibre is installed (for free) I have ongoing choice.

Anyone else had a more reasonable response from Vodafone customer "service"???