more vodafone new zealand woes-this time it's their unreliable vodafone live service

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › more vodafone new zealand woes-this time it's their unreliable vodafone live service

stacey1122

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#11128 4-Jan-2007 13:54

has anyone been experiencing problems over the past few weeks when using their 2g gprs mobile phone to access the vodafone live service? i have. alot of the times when i try to connect,it just disconnects. it takes me about 3 or 4 tries to get on. my cellphone has full reception when connecting but it still won't connect. once i do get on,all over the vodafone live pages,i always get 2 errors. the first one is 'sorry your request has timed out. please refresh your browser'. and sometimes i get the error 'error 002'. this happens on all of vodafone live pages like ringtones,self central,pictures. why can't vodafone new zealand provide a vodafone live service that works?

and why couldn't vodafone's text messaging service handle the increased texting over the christmas and new years periods,when telecom didn't have any text messaging delay problems?vodafone had problems with people calling overseas too. read here:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=27&objectid=10417479

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#56866 4-Jan-2007 14:56

The international calling was due to a serious incident overseas so we cannot blame Vodafone.

VodafoneLIVE has always been notoriously unreliable and slow... This is probably no different though around christmas, many new users are discovering it and this will slow it down...

The SMS problems they had no excuse for.. if it were the GSM network right on the stroke.. fair enough... but the UMTS network dying for a long period.. then havinga a repeat! unacceptable.

alasta

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#56875 4-Jan-2007 15:59

paradoxsm: VodafoneLIVE has always been notoriously unreliable and slow...

Agreed. I think that Vodafone Live! has been flakey since its inception, hence why I never use it. Broken links and timeouts occur constantly.

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#56879 4-Jan-2007 16:16

Hi guys,

I thought I should leap in at this point and introduce myself (I'm the new external communications manager at Vodafone - hello) and let you know what happened with the New Year's text messaging.

There was really only one problem with text messaging over New Year - overwhelming international demand in a short period of time.

This impacted on the server controlling messages sent 'off net', that is, to non-Vodafone customers. The management layer of the network became swamped trying to handle the excessive demand for text messages and so a huge backlog built up, affecting local texting as well.

Text messaging has become the default way of communicating with friends and family overseas - which meant rolling peaks of demand for a further 20 hours as New Year arrived in various time zones. Over New Year 2006, customers sent individual text messages for the most part: this year, customers sent batches. I saw a friend playing with her phone at about 7pm and she was "setting up her New Year message" and building a group of recipients to fire it off to.

This year everyone seemed to wait till after 11.30pm before hitting send - all at the same time. Traffic increased almost ninefold in the first hour. By way of contrast, Christmas Eve saw traffic "only" double its usual level. In years gone by, New Year was typically only about 10% or 15% busier than Christmas Eve.

So it wasn't ideal but if you're going to have a problem, overwhelming customer demand is the one I'd chose.

Hope that helps and if any of you have any Vodafone related questions I'm more than happy to field them. My email is paul dot brislen at vodafone dot com. I'm sure Juha will flame me now for my non-techy explanation ("It's like having bean cans on string") but thems the breaks I guess.

Cheers,

Paul Brislen
Vodafone External Communications Manager

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

stacey1122

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#56983 5-Jan-2007 13:08

paul Brislen,

good answers,but the question is,why did telecom mobile have no problems with sms messages in the christmas and new years period and vodafone did? seems to me like the vodafone network has less capacity than telecom's network.so what is vodafone going to do to stop this problem happening again this year? are you going to increase capacity on your network in time for this christmas? i mean,you guys need to do something right otherwise it will just keep on happening year by year.

and can you please tell the vodafone live techs to fix the vodafone live errors as i mentioned above please?

it is great to have someone who works for vodafone in this forum paul,but we have to see action from vodafone in fixing these problems because only talking about it will not fix these problems.

PaulBrislen: Hi guys,

I thought I should leap in at this point and introduce myself (I'm the new external communications manager at Vodafone - hello) and let you know what happened with the New Year's text messaging.

There was really only one problem with text messaging over New Year - overwhelming international demand in a short period of time.

This impacted on the server controlling messages sent 'off net', that is, to non-Vodafone customers. The management layer of the network became swamped trying to handle the excessive demand for text messages and so a huge backlog built up, affecting local texting as well.

Text messaging has become the default way of communicating with friends and family overseas - which meant rolling peaks of demand for a further 20 hours as New Year arrived in various time zones. Over New Year 2006, customers sent individual text messages for the most part: this year, customers sent batches. I saw a friend playing with her phone at about 7pm and she was "setting up her New Year message" and building a group of recipients to fire it off to.

This year everyone seemed to wait till after 11.30pm before hitting send - all at the same time. Traffic increased almost ninefold in the first hour. By way of contrast, Christmas Eve saw traffic "only" double its usual level. In years gone by, New Year was typically only about 10% or 15% busier than Christmas Eve.

So it wasn't ideal but if you're going to have a problem, overwhelming customer demand is the one I'd chose.

Hope that helps and if any of you have any Vodafone related questions I'm more than happy to field them. My email is paul dot brislen at vodafone dot com. I'm sure Juha will flame me now for my non-techy explanation ("It's like having bean cans on string") but thems the breaks I guess.

Cheers,

Paul Brislen
Vodafone External Communications Manager

chiefie

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#56985 5-Jan-2007 13:17

stacey1122: why did telecom mobile have no problems with sms messages in the christmas and new years period and vodafone did? seems to me like the vodafone network has less capacity than telecom's network.so what is vodafone going to do to stop this problem happening again this year? are you going to increase capacity on your network in time for this christmas? i mean,you guys need to do something right otherwise it will just keep on happening year by year.

Just thought I inject my thought on this... I know a Telecom NZ has TXT overload problem in the past too. So can't really blame either companies when the TXT service is overloaded.

True, both companies should have more than enough capacity to anticipate the busy holiday season, as to why this procedure was not set in place to counter such problem, that will be the question to their internal matter.

Since New Year's Eve, UMTS/HSDPA or even GPRS access has been VERY patchy... I do hope Vodafone NZ can seriously look into this and sort this out. Otherwise, 2007 will leave a very bad mark on Vodafone NZ for its known to have a bad start and slow response to answer the problem(s). Perhaps Vodafone NZ should really do a Press release to let the public know what had happened and keep them in-loop and informed. The worst that can bring to the Vodafone customers other than frustration of network outage, is deceiveness and cover-up.

Paul, hope you can bring this up to your media team. Public wants... DEMANDS to know why.

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alasta

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#56986 5-Jan-2007 13:31

stacey1122: why did telecom mobile have no problems with sms messages in the christmas and new years period and vodafone did? seems to me like the vodafone network has less capacity than telecom's network.

I fail to see how Telecom's situation bears any relevance to issues relating to Vodafone's network capacity. This is clearly not a question that should be aimed at Paul, or even brought up in this thread for that matter.

chiefie: Since New Year's Eve, UMTS/HSDPA or even GPRS access has been VERY patchy... I do hope Vodafone NZ can seriously look into this and sort this out.

That's interesting. I've been using 3G broadband throughout the holiday period (except after 7pm on new year's eve) and I haven't noticed any connectivity issues.

By the way, thanks to Paul for the detailed explanation. While Vodafone's recent network issues (including the one which occurred today) are disappointing, it is great to see that Vodafone are willing to front up and be honest about the problem.

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#57003 5-Jan-2007 15:58

Hi guys,

Thanks for that - happy to be part of the Geekzone community.

The problem was caused by phenomenal international traffic which had flow-on effects in the local network (see previous post) and Vodafone customers can and do roam to over 120 countries.

You'd have to compare our international service with those of other providers to get an idea of why we were more severely impacted.

As I said, feel free to contact me if you want to talk Vodafone.

Cheers,

Paul Brislen
External Communications Manager
Vodafone

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

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juha

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#57005 5-Jan-2007 16:19

What kind of non-techie explanation is that?

Juha

sbiddle

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#57010 5-Jan-2007 16:54

So you've explained what went wrong..

Why was it that that SMS (at least NZ) continued to function on the GSM network but not 3G network? Why was it that both GPRS and 3G data failed?

bradstewart

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#57016 5-Jan-2007 17:53

Hi Paul

Thanks for the explanation. There are still some questions that some round here would like answered. But it is good to have an official Vodafone presence here on Geekzone. Expect some good old fashioned trolling!!

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#57023 5-Jan-2007 18:52

Paul Brislen.... Congrats on showing your face... you are welcomed to GeekZone, so far most staff have hid behind mirrors or just said Vodafone are perfect...

Too late for me as my account SIM went dead at last night (I assume), My prepay is in a nokia 1100 now (reliable!!)

Great to see some official help!

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#57026 5-Jan-2007 19:30

Hi all, thanks for the warm welcome (not too crispy!).

Sbiddle - I'll try to find out for you. As far as I can tell, from what I've gathered so far, it's all part of the same SMS outage. Your getting through on 2G rather than 3G could simply have been a gap opening up for your SMS to get through and it would have done the same if you'd sent it via 3G, but I'm not sure. I'll ask on Monday (well, once I've figured out who to ask - part of the reason for the slow responses to questions is that I'm now all of two weeks into the job, and half that time has been public holidays).

Cheers,

Paul Brislen
External Communications Manager
Vodafone

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

sbiddle

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#57030 5-Jan-2007 20:25

PaulBrislen: Hi all, thanks for the warm welcome (not too crispy!).

Sbiddle - I'll try to find out for you. As far as I can tell, from what I've gathered so far, it's all part of the same SMS outage. Your getting through on 2G rather than 3G could simply have been a gap opening up for your SMS to get through and it would have done the same if you'd sent it via 3G, but I'm not sure. I'll ask on Monday (well, once I've figured out who to ask - part of the reason for the slow responses to questions is that I'm now all of two weeks into the job, and half that time has been public holidays).

Cheers,

Paul Brislen

External Communications Manager

Vodafone

Firstly it's good to see you on here!

The SMS issues certainly did not affect GSM users apart from a slight delay around 00:00 - 00:30 where messages were simply failing to send due to the overloaded SMSC. I probably sent maybe 20-30 messages during the course of the night and day and didn't get a single one fail in GSM mode and know from the fact I got replies to quite a few that if there were delays they were very minimal. 3G SMS died around 10pm on the evening of the 31st and wasn't working again until around 8 or 9am on the morning of the 1st.

The same issue occured on Xmas day - 3G SMS failed completely but was still working fine in GSM mode.

Obviously international SMS was another issue entirely, since nobody bothers sending international SMS's from Telecom it's not surprising they had no issues! :-)

johnr

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#57053 5-Jan-2007 23:00

stacey1122: has anyone been experiencing problems over the past few weeks when using their 2g gprs mobile phone to access the vodafone live service? i have. alot of the times when i try to connect,it just disconnects. it takes me about 3 or 4 tries to get on. my cellphone has full reception when connecting but it still won't connect. once i do get on,all over the vodafone live pages,i always get 2 errors. the first one is 'sorry your request has timed out. please refresh your browser'. and sometimes i get the error 'error 002'. this happens on all of vodafone live pages like ringtones,self central,pictures. why can't vodafone new zealand provide a vodafone live service that works?

and why couldn't vodafone's text messaging service handle the increased texting over the christmas and new years periods,when telecom didn't have any text messaging delay problems?vodafone had problems with people calling overseas too. read here:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=27&objectid=10417479

Stacey fixing Vlive issues is not that easy as different handsets work different on the WAP gateway a issue you get with one make and model may not affect another make or model

Also also check you have the latest firmware on your handset!!

simon14

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#57054 5-Jan-2007 23:06

All i'd like to know is this:

Why do PrePay customers get 2000 text messages for $10 and On Account customers only get 1000 text messages for $10?

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