Whats happened to vodafone?

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Whats happened to vodafone?

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#16566 14-Jul-2005 17:50

A lot of people have PC Cards these days for mobile data. The cable days are over. Thank god! But you have to admit (because of APT) Telecom did have an excellent selection of serial /USB cables. Even though the cables were expensive! I actually prefered having a cable for data rather than Bluetooth because it worked all the time and it wasn't complicated.

Now if Voda roll out 900 UMTS cell sites then maybe coverage will be ok - not fantastic but ok.

taniwha

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#16567 14-Jul-2005 17:55

I have to disagree Jama.. the cables were for laptops only, and they were for windows only, and they were expensive.
Plus all the fiddly to get out a laptop, and plugin a a cable while on a crowded tranzmetro carrage. RAther my phone stayed in my pocket, and i used a bluetooth PDA.

That's not to say that there aren't customers, and situations where a windows laptop and a usb cable is the best choice - but vodafone still has far far more options.

Jama

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#16573 14-Jul-2005 18:28

Oh so wrong - yes they were expensive but they were not just for Windows. There were Palm cables, Pocket PC cables and USB cables (drivers) for Mac.

Cables are so small they didn't take up much room at all. Seriously though 90% of the issues on the site relate to Bluetooth. It is the most 'non standard' 'standard' I have ever come across. Developed by Ericsson and they got out of it over a year ago - wise move I say. That Broadcomm/Widcomm company should be shot for the crappy products/drivers they dumped on the market.

I am not against short range radio - in fact it is very cool but come up with something better than Bluetooth!

freitasm

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#16575 14-Jul-2005 18:34

taniwha: 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.

Hmmmm? I am not following the handset line up very much (except on smart devices cases), but I don't remember seeing any EDGE capable handset in New Zealand, or at least not "most"...

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SNicolle

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#16577 14-Jul-2005 19:08

EDGE = EGSM?

Fallback to edge would be nice, gprs makes me shudder

Nokia
5140
9300
3200
3220
6230&6230i

and a wealth of newer nokia handsets
thats about it really

paradoxsm

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#16594 14-Jul-2005 20:19

Apart from the ads which I agree has gone down the chunder for both networks, NZ is doing very very well considering it's tiny population and is doing much better than most of the nightmares in Australia whom lock full priced phones, have network outages all the time and have customer service that close early or simply charge you to fix their own problems. (generic use of the word "they")

The deals we get are not overly bad,
$10 is just fantastic,
20¢ Pxt/photo msgn is too cheap,
free text all weekend is amazing,
Data rates are good ( not wow wow but better than most),
call rates are a wee bit on the high side but not super stupid, the right deals will shred them down

The only thing that hopefully might be looked at is capping, though after caps came in aus, the base prices have been steadily sneaking upwards. I can say Vodafone in Aus has not increased but the rest have.

Both 3g networks will be good together, no-one here will dare repeat the same mistakes that is Hutchinson 3 in Australia. the network works, the content is cr@p and stupidly overpriced and the support is atrocious. (indian based, bad lines like a bad voip)

With 3G, cheaper content will get people interested, whom will introduce others and more bottom line income for the operator.

Consider the following:

90,000 users paying $1.50 a video is $135,000

15,000 users paying $4.50 a vid is only $67,500

Which way would YOU go?

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taniwha

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#16598 14-Jul-2005 20:38

freitasm:
taniwha: 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.
Hmmmm? I am not following the handset line up very much (except on smart devices cases), but I don't remember seeing any EDGE capable handset in New Zealand, or at least not "most"...

i've now learned that "most" isn't correct - but lets just say that most of the ones that i've looked at have had EDGE - i guess i wasn't checking out the low end phones. Most "highend" gsm phones sold by vodafone nz are capable of edge.

taniwha

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#16599 14-Jul-2005 20:45

Jama: Oh so wrong - yes they were expensive but they were not just for Windows. There were Palm cables, Pocket PC cables and USB cables (drivers) for Mac.

The only mention of pda cables i ever saw was from a poster here. Never saw in telecom retail store. :-S maybe i need to check out a different store. Manners street doesn't seem to be keep up.

Jama:Seriously though 90% of the issues on the site relate to Bluetooth.

I think that's more to do with this site having a great big "Bluetooth Guides" section .. and being coloured blue.

sbiddle

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#16600 14-Jul-2005 21:02

SNicolle: EDGE = EGSM?

Fallback to edge would be nice, gprs makes me shudder

Nokia
5140
9300
3200
3220
6230&6230i

and a wealth of newer nokia handsets
thats about it really

EGSM is not EDGE.

ESGM = extended GSM, an extra 10MHz of spectrum that was added to the GSM specs in countries that allowed it.

SNicolle

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#16601 14-Jul-2005 21:23

interesting sbiddle, i was unsure hence the '?'

the handsets named are edge anyway.
Nokia has some handsets that are gsm edge and wcdma, so the wcdma/umts can fall back to edge

freitasm

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#16602 14-Jul-2005 21:42

taniwha:
Jama:Seriously though 90% of the issues on the site relate to Bluetooth.

I think that's more to do with this site having a great big "Bluetooth Guides" section .. and being coloured blue.

True... That's what happens most of the time: people use the forums as a free help desk - they come here after they read that they can connect A to B. They then go and download a updated driver that is not intended for their hardware, install and everything stops working. Then they come here "My Bluetooth doesn't work".

Also a lot of help desks (I know HP in Europe and Canada do it) send people to Geekzone when they have problems with their Pocket PC.

You don't believe the number of e-mails I get with questions that could be easily answered by a search in our forums.

I actually have three Bluetooth enabled computers, three Pocket PC, two Smartphones, Bluetooth mouse, Bluetooth datashow, Bluetooth headsets and I still have to find problems connecting these things.

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#16603 14-Jul-2005 21:57

taniwha:
Jama: Oh so wrong - yes they were expensive but they were not just for Windows. There were Palm cables, Pocket PC cables and USB cables (drivers) for Mac.

The only mention of pda cables i ever saw was from a poster here. Never saw in telecom retail store. :-S maybe i need to check out a different store. Manners street doesn't seem to be keep up.

Telecom retail stores are generally not where you find specialist items. I have an office at the back of a retail store, and so by default have become the technical support for a division of the company i dont even work for, and I bet i get 100% of the Mac/*nix questions. Its about 1 a month resulting in one sale every two months.

Its just not worth holding any mac/*nix specific stock, nor doing any mac/*nix training.

The people who use mac/*nix are generally knowledgeable resourceful people, who go straight to people that specialise in these things, or seek help on the net (which is one of the best ways to get help IMO)

alasta

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#16607 14-Jul-2005 22:17

Its just not worth holding any mac/*nix specific stock, nor doing any mac/*nix training.

The people who use mac/*nix are generally knowledgeable resourceful people, who go straight to people that specialise in these things, or seek help on the net (which is one of the best ways to get help IMO)

My experience is that if you want to interface a phone with a Mac, bluetooth is the way to do it. Finding a data cable that works, and then actually getting it to work is a nightmare. If, on the other hand, you have a bluetooth handset, then you just need to get a USB bluetooth adaptor (OS X seems to support most of them out of the box), and then it's a reasonably straightforward procedure from there.

With this in mind, Mac users are probably currently better off with Vodafone because they have a much better selection of bluetooth enabled handsets. It's also worth noting that iSync supports far more GSM handsets than CDMA.

tonyhughes

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#16608 14-Jul-2005 22:20

alasta: With this in mind, Mac users are probably currently better off with Vodafone because they have a much better selection of bluetooth enabled handsets. It's also worth noting that iSync supports far more GSM handsets than CDMA.

Mac users also know that just because something is widespread and more prolific than the competition, that its not necessarily better :-)

taniwha

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#16617 15-Jul-2005 09:28

Its just not worth holding any mac/*nix specific stock, nor doing any mac/*nix training.

The converse is true.. i know there's no point asking *any* salesperson in NZ if i can sync my nokia phone with evolution.

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