Roaming in Australia unavailable

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37 posts

Geek

#102866 4-Jan-2008 11:16

Service is still not fully restored. 10 days and counting...

I don't understand how this can completely be explained by international capacity. We had GSM modems working without any problems North of Adelaide and only comparatively minor problems in Canberra where the device would connect in the wee hours of the morning. Sydney came and went, one device in Perth worked for a while but all others had nothing and we had a complete blackout in Melbourne and central Adelaide. With hundreds of modems constantly retrying I would have expected at least one to connect occasionally if it was a congestion issue?

I could accept a few hours maybe over Christmas eve and NYE when everyone sends SMS to their entire address book but 10 days!!?? I would really like a decent explanation of the problems. My guess is SMS retries / failure messages reaching a critical mass which saturated the signaling channels or something but surely these could have been filtered or increased retry delays to clear the congestion. This would have been preferable to not even being able to connect to a phone Network for 10 DAYS!!!

It would also have been helpful if the call center hadn't got my hopes up everytime I called with "this problem is being worked on right now at the highest priority and should be back up in a few hours" when apparently they knew all along that the problem could not be fixed because they couldn't obtain more international capacity and everyone was actually just waiting for the congestion to clear.

Excuse me if my EXTREMELY high levels of frustration have led me to rant a little.

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#102867 4-Jan-2008 11:24

James_: Service is still not fully restored. 10 days and counting...

I don't understand how this can completely be explained by international capacity. We had GSM modems working without any problems North of Adelaide and only comparatively minor problems in Canberra where the device would connect in the wee hours of the morning. Sydney came and went, one device in Perth worked for a while but all others had nothing and we had a complete blackout in Melbourne and central Adelaide. With hundreds of modems constantly retrying I would have expected at least one to connect occasionally if it was a congestion issue?

I could accept a few hours maybe over Christmas eve and NYE when everyone sends SMS to their entire address book but 10 days!!?? I would really like a decent explanation of the problems. My guess is SMS retries / failure messages reaching a critical mass which saturated the signaling channels or something but surely these could have been filtered or increased retry delays to clear the congestion. This would have been preferable to not even being able to connect to a phone Network for 10 DAYS!!!

It would also have been helpful if the call center hadn't got my hopes up everytime I called with "this problem is being worked on right now at the highest priority and should be back up in a few hours" when apparently they knew all along that the problem could not be fixed because they couldn't obtain more international capacity and everyone was actually just waiting for the congestion to clear.

Excuse me if my EXTREMELY high levels of frustration have led me to rant a little.

Greg, I'm not sure if we're talking about the same issue here or not. This was a roaming problem with Vodafone Australia's network and congestion on its international capacity... are you saying you took hundreds of modems to Australia or am I misunderstanding your situation?

cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

James_

37 posts

Geek

#102872 4-Jan-2008 11:33

The modems are in Australia and they have VFNZ SIM cards in them on roaming. Expensive way of doing it I know but it works for our application. (at least it used to before xmas eve...)

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#102875 4-Jan-2008 11:37

James_: The modems are in Australia and they have VFNZ SIM cards in them on roaming. Expensive way of doing it I know but it works for our application. (at least it used to before xmas eve...)

Really? Well, thank you from the bottom of my bonus

.

The situation should have resolved by now - Vodafone Australia has more capacity, demand has dropped off and by all accounts we're back to normal (or as close as we ever get).

I'd say you'd be better off contacting your account manager or, failing that, PM'ing me with your details and I'll escalate it.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

PenultimateHop

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#102895 4-Jan-2008 13:34

IC:

RE: I'm loathe to feed the troll ... you sound like a real company TROLL ... I bet you even do the purchasing for the phone company ??

Reality is those rates are NOT FLAT as you claim but the company flattens them for you the user and this company saw a
window of opportunity to make a killing and now you step in to confuse the issue.

I don't work for any phone company, much less "the" phone company.

You are quite incorrect about how circuit billing and the costs involved works. I've been there, done it, and signed the contracts.

sloth

29 posts

Geek

#102906 4-Jan-2008 15:04

Seems this thread is going a bit OT now, but anyway, I think I'm done with it.

Spoke to customer services today, got $10 credit, and that's my lot. OK, that definitely doesn't cover my expenses / hassle because of the downtime, but I wasn't getting anywhere by pushing for more.

jesseycy

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#102913 4-Jan-2008 15:54

GRRR............

YET another angry Vodafone customer here. Ah yes, my Vodafone roaming in Australia, died from 26th Dec till 2nd Jan.... And I just got back!

Let's calculate the "damage"...
26th Dec: Expensive credit-card paid phone box call back to Vodafone NZ: (5mins waiting time too!) - A$9
28th Dec: Another expensive call in hotel (with lots of waiting time while "would you mind holding while I check): A$18
26th-3rd: Telstra Prepaid: $35

*Sigh*...... As a chuckle.... My friend was joking that if he was the operations manager (or similar) in Vodafone NZ, he'll probably be fired... Imagine all the roaming dollars lost!!!

On a more technical side....

I don't think it's a capacity issue. On the 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 2, I have tried connecting to ALL networks in Australia. The Vodafone AU response - Emerg calls only. The other carriers - either "no access to netw.", or after "connecting" for very long, like 5mins, it fails to connect.

Btw, this was done with 3 different sim cards (2 Prepay supa prepay on traveller, 1 on motormouth auto-roam), and 2 phones.

As for the "time" and "how" this problem was logged, me and my friends called on the 26th, and have been told by Vodafone NZ that they are aware of the issue. Vodafone AU (in one of the shops) also seem aware of this, as they told me that "quite a few people have come in with this problem).

Hence.... I don't really think it's as simple a case of "our capacity is too full" as Vodafone NZ has try making this out to be. Seems rather to be some major connection failure and the techs staying home for christmas and new year rather than remedying immediately.

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cranz

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#102920 4-Jan-2008 16:13

jesseycy:
Btw, this was done with 3 different sim cards (2 Prepay supa prepay on traveller, 1 on motormouth auto-roam), and 2 phones.

Because these are prepaid connections they are only provisioned to connect to VFAU, they do not have access to the other networks in Australia unless you put the connections on 'creditRoam'. This is why you were receiving the No access to network messages, the issue affected VFAU's roaming ability only

jesseycy

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#102967 4-Jan-2008 22:01

cranz, you sure? Even Supa Prepay on Vodafone Traveller can't "roam" on other networks??? If so, then their website doesn't really explain this.....

cokemaster

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#102970 4-Jan-2008 22:04

jesseycy:
cranz, you sure? Even Supa Prepay on Vodafone Traveller can't "roam" on other networks??? If so, then their website doesn't really explain this.....

No, you'll only be able to roam on VFAU unless you linked your credit card to your prepaid account (other networks don't do realtime billing?)

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johnr

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#102971 4-Jan-2008 22:05

Yes Cranz is %100 sure and correct

James_

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#103005 5-Jan-2008 09:49

Vodafone have stopped blaming Optus and are now admitting responsibility (this might be useful when asking for a credit!)

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Vodafone-backtracks-on-roaming-chaos/0,130061791,339284834,00.htm

sbiddle

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#103022 5-Jan-2008 12:30

It's good to see that VF have now backed down from their "blame Optus" attitude and admitted the problems lay solely with it's poor forecasting of demand. I had been told by a good source in Oz a couple of days into the problem that it was nothing to do with Optus (and posted this near the start of the thread) and if you're to believe my source Optus were rather annoyed by getting the blame put on them, it's probably hardly surprising then that they didn't seem in any hurry to reconfigure things to allocate extra capacity to Vodafone.

sbiddle

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#103492 8-Jan-2008 06:55

Just out of curiosity Paul - why did you say on the TUANZ site here that the outage only lasted 5 days?

Vodafone staff were aware at 10pm on Xmas day that there were serious issues as their tech email says. The problem appeared to be resolved by last Friday morning. That's a total of 10 full days, not 5.

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#103516 8-Jan-2008 09:57

Vodafone Australia tells me they reached saturation on international capacity and it remained at or above that level for five days.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

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