vodafone coverage tool

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › vodafone coverage tool

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23 posts

Geek

#214837 14-May-2009 14:38

Cool. Did you buy the E51 in NZ? If so your coverage will be the same as everyone else in Palmerston North. I've heard some not so good stories of 3G in that province but your standard voice coverage should be no problem at all. Vodafone are due to release a better coverage tool very shortly so I can update you with that soon. If it's a NZ vodafone edition of the E51 then you may have problems when transitioning to XT's new network. Every phone released in NZ whether VF or TMNZ has their own settings ingrained in the handset at the time of distribution.
If a phone has VF settings in it then more than likely some features of Telecoms new XT won't be accessible to you. Just as someone bringing a foreign handset to NZ generally won't have access to VF live etc.

If you think VF has problems (and we've been doing 3G since 2005) then just imagine all the balls ups Telecom is gonna have. It might interest you that if you make a call on XT network while in 3G coverage and that call happens to drop out of 3G range then you're screwed! XT has no backup to ensure customers retain that call.
If a call drops out of 3G on VF however it won't disconnect because it has a 'soft transfer' back to 2G during the call. You won't even know that it's changed freq range. XT= bah blah blah. VF = Thumbs up.
Don't hate on VF cos we're a huge foreign beast of a company....Telecom is just the same.....AT&T anyone?
Peace.

freitasm

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#214867 14-May-2009 16:37

Chompchomp: If you think VF has problems (and we've been doing 3G since 2005) then just imagine all the balls ups Telecom is gonna have. It might interest you that if you make a call on XT network while in 3G coverage and that call happens to drop out of 3G range then you're screwed! XT has no backup to ensure customers retain that call.
If a call drops out of 3G on VF however it won't disconnect because it has a 'soft transfer' back to 2G during the call. You won't even know that it's changed freq range. XT= bah blah blah. VF = Thumbs up.

What a load of rubish. The networks are very different. Vodafone drops to 2G because they have not enough 2100 MHz coverage. They fill the rest with 2G. Telecom is on the other hand 100% 3G with a larger footprint -no need to drop to 2G then.

Please stop the fanboyism now.

patdude

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#214873 14-May-2009 17:04

If you think VF has problems (and we've been doing 3G since 2005) then just imagine all the balls ups Telecom is gonna have. It might interest you that if you make a call on XT network while in 3G coverage and that call happens to drop out of 3G range then you're screwed! XT has no backup to ensure customers retain that call.
If a call drops out of 3G on VF however it won't disconnect because it has a 'soft transfer' back to 2G during the call. You won't even know that it's changed freq range. XT= bah blah blah. VF = Thumbs up.
Don't hate on VF cos we're a huge foreign beast of a company....Telecom is just the same.....AT&T anyone?
Peace.

I agree with Frietasm on this - Chompy you are indeed talking rubbish

Vodafone may have been doing 3G for 5 years but Telecom built NZs first mobiule network and has had 3G in the form of CDMA 1x and then EVDO since 2000.

GSM cellsites handing over to 3G UMTS cellsites and visavis tend to have high call failure rates as the handset must change operating modes and switch spectrum. From memory GSM doesnt support soft handovers and can only do a hard handovers. Secondly UMTS fallback to GSM probably wont work as both 2G and 3G use the same network infrastructure and as the bulk of any network problems tend to be concentrated int he core, both cellsite air interfaces will fail. XT doesn't have an ageing 14 year old GSM geriatric to support so doesnt have the liabilities that go with it such as 3G to 2G handover issues.

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#214874 14-May-2009 17:09

This is heading well OT for this thread so lets just leave it here. No need for a slinging match to break out.

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#214876 14-May-2009 17:28

freitasm:
Chompchomp: If you think VF has problems (and we've been doing 3G since 2005) then just imagine all the balls ups Telecom is gonna have. It might interest you that if you make a call on XT network while in 3G coverage and that call happens to drop out of 3G range then you're screwed! XT has no backup to ensure customers retain that call.
If a call drops out of 3G on VF however it won't disconnect because it has a 'soft transfer' back to 2G during the call. You won't even know that it's changed freq range. XT= bah blah blah. VF = Thumbs up.

What a load of rubish. The networks are very different. Vodafone drops to 2G because they have not enough 2100 MHz coverage. They fill the rest with 2G. Telecom is on the other hand 100% 3G with a larger footprint -no need to drop to 2G then.

Please stop the fanboyism now.

Worst still, if you are on Telecom's CDMA, and your call drops out, there is not even an AMPS network for this to fall back to!

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patdude

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#214882 14-May-2009 17:44

ah well at least if my landline fails I can still grab a carrier pidgeon

w2krules

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#214902 14-May-2009 19:49

freitasm:

What a load of rubish. The networks are very different. Vodafone drops to 2G because they have not enough 2100 MHz coverage. They fill the rest with 2G. Telecom is on the other hand 100% 3G with a larger footprint -no need to drop to 2G then.

Well, that may be true today, but Vodafone are very rapidly rolling out 900 MHz UMTS and may have similar coverage to the XT network by the end of May. Their big weakness is likely to be reliance on 2100 MHz in main centres.

Can't believe it, but I'm defending Vodafone!

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allstarnz

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#214971 15-May-2009 09:32

to ignore the trolling for a sec, my handset is a Telstra branded phone bought from Australia. Better priced and speced than the one Vodafone NZ have (my one has a camera on it and cost about $200 less)

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#214973 15-May-2009 09:37

w2krules:
freitasm:

What a load of rubish. The networks are very different. Vodafone drops to 2G because they have not enough 2100 MHz coverage. They fill the rest with 2G. Telecom is on the other hand 100% 3G with a larger footprint -no need to drop to 2G then.

Well, that may be true today, but Vodafone are very rapidly rolling out 900 MHz UMTS and may have similar coverage to the XT network by the end of May. Their big weakness is likely to be reliance on 2100 MHz in main centres.

Can't believe it, but I'm defending Vodafone!

But it won't solve the problem. Vodafone's service drops from 2100MHz WCDMA to 900MHz GSM when out of coverage.

They aren't - at least now - replacing 900MHz GSM with 900MHz WCDMA. It's obvious that there are still lots of 2G only handsets around and they can't simply take down their 2G network. So if you have problems with 2100MHz WCDMA dropping to 900MHz GSM this will continue for a while.

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#214979 15-May-2009 09:45

I lock my handset to WCDMA only & it works great. This is on de-branded Nokia's, as the VFNZ firmware does not have this option.
Would be great if VFNZ enabled this option on their future firmware releases, esp on the 2100/900 3G handsets.

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Chompchomp

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#215037 15-May-2009 13:51

So I compose a veritable Telecom destroyer of a reply and it disappears somewhere. I'm guessing cos it was some time in the making that geekzone logged me out? Otherwise I'd still be logged in and able to see that my reply has indeed been posted.
As always, open to correction.
Chomps.
(very frustrated at this point and would love some of Coffeebaron's coffee.)

w2krules

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#215314 17-May-2009 06:09

freitasm:
w2krules:
freitasm:

What a load of rubish. The networks are very different. Vodafone drops to 2G because they have not enough 2100 MHz coverage. They fill the rest with 2G. Telecom is on the other hand 100% 3G with a larger footprint -no need to drop to 2G then.

Well, that may be true today, but Vodafone are very rapidly rolling out 900 MHz UMTS and may have similar coverage to the XT network by the end of May. Their big weakness is likely to be reliance on 2100 MHz in main centres.

Can't believe it, but I'm defending Vodafone!

But it won't solve the problem. Vodafone's service drops from 2100MHz WCDMA to 900MHz GSM when out of coverage.

They aren't - at least now - replacing 900MHz GSM with 900MHz WCDMA. It's obvious that there are still lots of 2G only handsets around and they can't simply take down their 2G network. So if you have problems with 2100MHz WCDMA dropping to 900MHz GSM this will continue for a while.

Agreed, anyone with a GSM / 2100 WDCMA phone will continue to have this problem. But dual band (900 / 2100) WDCMA phones should simply change to 900 WDCMA when there is coverage. How well this works in practice remains to be seen.

I ditched the VFNZ firmware some time ago so I can lock my phone to UMTS, and it is now working well away from the main centres when there is 900 MHz coverage. But there are still problems in Auckland, where 2100 WCDMA coverage just vanishes in some places.

It will be very interesting to see how Vodafone integrate their 900 MHz WCDMA network. I'd guess that the vast majority of their customers' phones won't be able to use it, and as you've noted, there will still have problems with fallback to GSM. But at last I can now enjoy decent 3G coverage!

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coffeebaron

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#215528 18-May-2009 09:26

Chompchomp: So I compose a veritable Telecom destroyer of a reply and it disappears somewhere. I'm guessing cos it was some time in the making that geekzone logged me out? Otherwise I'd still be logged in and able to see that my reply has indeed been posted.

As always, open to correction.

Chomps.

(very frustrated at this point and would love some of Coffeebaron's coffee.)

I always copy text to clipboard before I hit post. Sometimes the post can disappear into a Geekzone blackhole :)
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#215542 18-May-2009 10:13

New coverage tool is now live

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/coverage/

John

allstarnz

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#215588 18-May-2009 13:47

thanks johnr

just to confirm
3G Broadband: 2100MHz WCDMA?
3G Broadband Extended: 900MHz WCDMA?

Slightly annoying this is nowhere on the site, instead explained by meaningless sales speak.

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