Whats happened to vodafone?

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#16532 13-Jul-2005 16:02

Just trying not to sound biased.

tonyhughes

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#16534 13-Jul-2005 16:07

People talk about being biased as if its a bad thing. I encourage people to be passionate about what they beleive in. (Whilst still accepting the fair views and criticism of others).

Id kill for a Vodafone handset on the Telecom network... thats about all that interests me, so when you take into account the only think i like about VF is something they dont actually make/design themselves, then its obvious where my choice lies.

I do agree with the fact that VF have certainly been the underlying cause of most of the initiatives taken by Telecom mobile, but the same goes the other way too (not necessarily by Telecom, but by Vodas competitors worldwide)

Jama

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#16535 13-Jul-2005 16:26

Voda is not responsible for MOST of the innovations introduced by Telecom Mobile. Don't believe everything you hear. Sometimes being a big global corporate means you can't be too innovative and nimble.

tonyhughes

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#16537 13-Jul-2005 18:23

I only meant it in the respect that competition breeds innovation. (as outlined by saying that vodas competitors on a global scale have cause voda to innovate).

riahon

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#16539 13-Jul-2005 19:04

I think that VF have hit rock bottom with that crass nude volleyball ad!!!
My wife actually sold her VF (told her to ages ago to save me money) when she saw that ad.

edit: which reminds me of another ad that they had about ringing in to work pretending to be sick. Maybe I am old fashion but work ethic of people today is shocking.

alasta

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#16540 13-Jul-2005 19:41

Since we're stuck with subjective observation to judge users' text messaging habits, it should be safe for me to say that I think that 10% of a network's customer base are responsible for 90% of the network's text messaging traffic.

Personally, I know very few people who send more than about five text messages per week, but I know that it's common for teenagers to send ten times this amount.

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antoniosk

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#16541 13-Jul-2005 23:04

Jama: Correct but as Voda have said before 'its not about speed its about services'.

Internet access - whoops, 128k on Vodafone and 500k on Telecom EVDO
Coverage 3G - whoops Urban only on Voda, national on Telecom by end of year

The service I use is Internet, on my laptop. I get my email, I get my internet. Easy

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#16544 14-Jul-2005 00:17

I guess this is a bit of a troll, but I'm sticking with Voda for the timebeing.

Every year I travel to China I like to use local accounts there... and I tend to buy my handsets there as well due to the price being lower in some cases and more choice.
Don't get me wrong there are some really nice CDMA handsets over there in China... I would have probably brought one if I was able to get it connected here. Obviously I won't be able to so that idea is mute.

Unless Telecom offers something offers exceptional value that Voda doesn't, which offsets the limited choice and the fact that I'm forced to roam when overseas... then I will stick to Voda.

I don't use data excessively (now on my p910 I tend to wait till I get home before doing major downloads) so I don't really notice the lack of speed GPRS has to CDMA EVDO, and while I would like better data pricing - its no real skin off my nose.

Signal & coverage is not really an issue here in Palmerston North either, except when I go back to the Hawkes Bay where some areas are patchey (although in most cases CDMA doesn't cover it either).

Again, this is probably a troll.

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tonyhughes

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#16547 14-Jul-2005 01:39

cokemaster: I guess this is a bit of a troll, but I'm sticking with Voda for the timebeing.

Not a troll at all - look at the thread title... there are always going to be very valid reasons for one or the other network, and its nice to hear them all :-)

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#16554 14-Jul-2005 09:57

antoniosk: Coverage 3G - whoops Urban only on Voda, national on Telecom by end of year

Well not quite nationwide - just major cities and towns. There will probably not be a big difference between both Vodafone's 3GMS network and T3G coverage wise, the simple fact is Vodafone delayed their launch to increase their coverage. The biggest advantage Telecom have is that to offer many of their T3G services you don't need EV-DO (and infact some of their T3G phones are not EV-DO). For Vodafone to offer many of their 3G services you need 3GSM coverage, GPRS simply can't support video downloads and video calling.

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#16555 14-Jul-2005 10:05

sbiddle:
antoniosk: Coverage 3G - whoops Urban only on Voda, national on Telecom by end of year
Well not quite nationwide - just major cities and towns. There will probably not be a big difference between both Vodafone's 3GMS network and T3G coverage wise, the simple fact is Vodafone delayed their launch to increase their coverage. The biggest advantage Telecom have is that to offer many of their T3G services you don't need EV-DO (and infact some of their T3G phones are not EV-DO). For Vodafone to offer many of their 3G services you need 3GSM coverage, GPRS simply can't support video downloads and video calling.

This is an interesting thing... In the USA most UMTS operators are relying on fallback to EDGE, while here Vodafone will rely on fallback to GPRS. There's a huge difference in performance. It means that on Vodafone users will experience some benefits or nothing.

On Telecom the fallback from CDMA EV-DO is to CDMA 1xRTT, which is a little slower in speeds than EDGE, but certainly faster than GPRS.

Of course this should not be a factor for users/companies utilising telemetry/M2M for instance, but for users like myself (and others in this forum), speed makes a lot of a difference when using the laptop wirelessly to access an Exchange Server or work in a always-connected mode.

YMMV of course.

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Jama

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#16557 14-Jul-2005 10:31

Not only that but you will be handing over frequency - 2.1GHz (UMTS) down to 900MHz (GPRS) which is considered to be hard hand over. In other words there could be quite a delay while the data session is renegotiated to the new frequency. Reports from overseas indicate that UMTS does not work to well through walls (concrete, steel, etc) that will be an issue.

But the biggest issues will latency and coverage. The latency on UMTS will be around 120ms but on GPRS it is 1000ms - a massive difference. According to the MED web site and latest media reports Voda will have 309 UMTS cell sites. Considering they have 1100 GSM cell sites to give the current GSM foot print and the laws of radio propagation state that the higher the frequency the lower the coverage you have to wonder what sort of coverage footprint will be provided by 309 UMTS cell sites (50 of them are in Wellington)? Also, one last thing - UMTS uses WCDMA as the air interface. The CDMA air interface experiences what is called Pilot Pollution. This means that the cell site you connect to needs to me more dominant (signal) than the neighbouring cell sites. If the device sees multiple cell sites of the same signal strength it will hop around from cell site to cell site.

sbiddle

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#16559 14-Jul-2005 16:14

I wouldn't rely in the MED prism database for accurate info Jama - Vodafone have been very slow updating their 3G stuff in it. There have been sites operational in Wellington for month that have only just appeared and some that haven't yet got a mention. Vodafone also duplicated most of their 900 sites to creaty 'dummy' 3G entries in May last year however many existing sites will not have new gear on them as new 3G only sites have been built nearby (Tory St is a classic example where Voda have built a brand new site on the old BCL building right across the road from their existing GSM/Woosh combined site).

Vodafone are plain stupid not to be deploying EDGE in NZ, as I understand the situation it was something that very much wanted to do but the Vodafone group have always been anti EDGE and have never deployed it anywhere in the world. All of their new sites are EDGE capable so maybe it's something that may change in the future. There are now a large number of operators deploying EDGE once they have realised 3GSM isn't quite what it was hyped up to be and have accepted that 3GSM coverage will probably never mirror existing GSM coverage.

I'm a Vodafone fan but there is no argueing with the simple fact that Telecom offers the best options for mobile data in NZ if speed is an issue. Vodafone may as well be waving the white flag now and admitting defeat - not deploying EDGE is plain stupid. The only thing that 3GSM can really offer over EDGE is video calling, Vodafone deploying HSDPA might offer the fastest speed but when the coverage is limited and the dropback speed is GPRS it's not going to appeal to the same market as what Telecom can offer.

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#16560 14-Jul-2005 17:16

getting back on topic... yeah. voda need a good slap. WAKE UP!!

i am very pleased that voda *finally* introduced their free weekends - ignoring that their network crumpled under load on the first weekend, it was nice to see that the international corporation was at least glancing at the NZ market occasionally. Up till then they seemed to have completely ignored $10txt.

the video phones at the voda 3G launch party aren't really "competition", but they do give an advantage to voda for a while. GSM handsets have long been far better than cdma - and that doesn't seem to be changing (i want sony-ericsson back). Once again voda's strength have nothing to did with the corporation, and everything to do with the european market driving gsm.

taniwha

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#16561 14-Jul-2005 17:25

sbiddle:
Vodafone are plain stupid not to be deploying EDGE in NZ, as I understand the situation it was something that very much wanted to do but the Vodafone group have always been anti EDGE and have never deployed it anywhere in the world. All of their new sites are EDGE capable so maybe it's something that may change in the future. There are now a large number of operators deploying EDGE once they have realised 3GSM isn't quite what it was hyped up to be and have accepted that 3GSM coverage will probably never mirror existing GSM coverage.

i agree - and i put much of the blame for slow uptake of mobile data on vodafone, for offering an abysmally slow GPRS even while most of the handsets they sold supported EDGE.

(meanwhile telecom handsets only had costly buggy windozeonly USB cables for mobile data, which is hardly convenient)

GSM handsets, but doing CDMA on Telecom.... that would be bliss

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