Roaming in Australia unavailable

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115 posts

Master Geek

# 102651 3-Jan-2008 09:48

Everybody is talking about Vodafone passing the buck.

I think everyone effected should think themselves lucky they are getting a true and accurate description of whats going on.
Paul is coming in here in his own time to give you a reason why this is happening.

He is explaining exactly what is going on.
If it is a problem on Vodafone Au or Optus. WHy would he say it is Voda NZ?

Everybody asked for a reson why this is happening.
You got given an answer.

He is simply explaining what is wrong with the networks

VFNZPaulBrislen

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# 102652 3-Jan-2008 09:49

Hi Cokemaster,

I think you're confusing explaining what's gone on with laying blame. I'm not pointing the finger or passing the buck or trying to blame someone else, I'm trying to explain to you what happened. That's why I post here - to explain what's going on amidst all the guessing and supposing that goes on when something like this happens.

So, the three main points:

1: The issue is with Vodafone Australia and the amount of international backhaul it has with Optus.

2: That means international roaming customers have had a hard time of it and we haven't been able to help as much as we would wish because it's happening on someone else's network (in this case, Optus's by way of Vodafone Australia).

3: We (Vodafone NZ) will address compensation with those customers on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not blaming Optus for providing international capacity. I'm not blaming Vodafone Australia for "only" doubling its capacity for the summer season. I'm not blaming the customers for roaming to Australia in such large numbers. I'm not blaming the airlines for having a price war that means customers can go to Australia for summer in such large numbers.

I'm just trying to explain what has happened and what can or can not be done to fix it.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

cokemaster

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# 102653 3-Jan-2008 09:49

With clains like this:

Vodafone claims the roaming problems will not be repeated once it upgrades its network to HSPA, the faster form of 3G. The operator announced in December that it intends to move to HSPA by Christmas 2008, giving users access to a theoretical maximum download speed of 3.6Mbps.

I hope VF remembers to buy more international capacity because 3G has the potential to use even more data....

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cokemaster

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# 102656 3-Jan-2008 10:27

PaulBrislen: Hi Cokemaster,

I think you're confusing explaining what's gone on with laying blame. I'm not pointing the finger or passing the buck or trying to blame someone else, I'm trying to explain to you what happened. That's why I post here - to explain what's going on amidst all the guessing and supposing that goes on when something like this happens.

So, the three main points:

1: The issue is with Vodafone Australia and the amount of international backhaul it has with Optus.

2: That means international roaming customers have had a hard time of it and we haven't been able to help as much as we would wish because it's happening on someone else's network (in this case, Optus's by way of Vodafone Australia).

3: We (Vodafone NZ) will address compensation with those customers on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not blaming Optus for providing international capacity. I'm not blaming Vodafone Australia for "only" doubling its capacity for the summer season. I'm not blaming the customers for roaming to Australia in such large numbers. I'm not blaming the airlines for having a price war that means customers can go to Australia for summer in such large numbers.

I'm just trying to explain what has happened and what can or can not be done to fix it.

Cheers

Paul

What I am getting at is that posts and reports (from stuff/nzherald) have brought Optus into the picture while clearly customers are paying Vodafone NZ (and indirectly Vodafone AU) for the service. Vodafone in turn pay Optus for service.

Clearly this is an issue for Vodafone AU to sort out in terms of capacity and bandwidth, they buy capacity from Optus. What goes on between Optus and Vodafone AU is their business, they are grown ups and both probably have a nice legal group/private army/militia to go over any fine print too. Since Vodafone AU does not have enough capacity to service these roaming customers, why are they and Vodafone NZ bring Optus into the picture?

They could have easily replaced Optus with "Our international backhaul provider"/"Our international capacity is saterated" but instead opted to put name Optus. Why?
Was it because they weren't meeting their SLA's? Which would be an internal/contractual matter.
Or was it because by the time Vodafone AU realized that they hadn't purchased enough bandwidth, there wasn't any left to buy and naturally this was their providers fault? And that Optus should foot some of the publicity?

By bringing Optus into the statements, its suggesting somewhat that either Vodafone networks responsibilities to support their customers are reduced somewhat. Peoples expectations are high when it comes to roaming (despite it involving foreign networks etc) as roaming are one of these insanely high margin products where both operators benefit a lot (does data really cost $30 a mb??) and gives them a lot of incentive ($$$) to get it right, which is why when it breaks badly for prolonged periods of time - people start asking why.

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hudebnik

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Wannabe Geek

# 102662 3-Jan-2008 11:03

PaulBrislen

Perhaps Paul is being a little economical with the explanations? How can an inability to log on to the Vodafone network be due to a "lack on international capacity"?

VFNZPaulBrislen

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# 102678 3-Jan-2008 12:16

hudebnik: PaulBrislen

Perhaps Paul is being a little economical with the explanations? How can an inability to log on to the Vodafone network be due to a "lack on international capacity"?

Because it's only affecting those customers who are ROAMING INTERNATIONALLY on Vodafone Australia's network or those Vodafone Australia customers who are ROAMING INTERNATIONALLY on someone else's network.

It's the ROAMING INTERNATIONALLY bit that means they can't log on due to a lack of INTERNATIONAL capacity.

Does that help?

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

zocster

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# 102680 3-Jan-2008 12:19

Services        2G & 3G Voice, Data & Video Calls
Area Affect     Vodafone Australia
Outage Start Time       03/01/2008 07:00
Expected Time to Restore (ETR) No ETR
Problem Description     Connection to the Network is lost at Vodafone Australia and effects Vodafone New Zealand and Vodafone Fiji.

Update 1: Techs at Vodafone Australia are still working to fix this issue…next update in 30 mins

zocster

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# 102681 3-Jan-2008 12:25

Thanks to Vodafone that keeping us UP TO DATE, not many other companies do unfortunately.

zocster

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# 102682 3-Jan-2008 12:43

Update 2: The fault has been recognised to be with the firewall, Engineers looking to fix the issue.

cokemaster

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# 102684 3-Jan-2008 12:50

zocster: Thanks to Vodafone that keeping us UP TO DATE, not many other companies do unfortunately.

Of course, for non-corporates, it took a rather large thread to get any traction. And they don't get nice informer emails either.

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pwner

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# 102685 3-Jan-2008 12:52

The big thing to remember is that there are many layers to the mobile phone network
1. Signalling (SS7)
2. Voice Channels
3. GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA Packet data capasity

if you cannot get onto the network at all then the issue is with the SS7 links that Vodafone AU link to Vodafone NZ via Optus

if you are on the network and then cannot make a phone call then it is the voice channels, and so on for data.

from the looks of things it was only an issue with the SS7 signalling, they really need to move their signalling links to a direct SIGTRAN link to VFAU but i'm not sure if it is on the cards for them. they have a heap of data capasity so they might as well use it and make their network better

freitasm

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# 102687 3-Jan-2008 13:06

zocster: Services        2G & 3G Voice, Data & Video Calls
Area Affect     Vodafone Australia
Outage Start Time       03/01/2008 07:00
Expected Time to Restore (ETR) No ETR
Problem Description     Connection to the Network is lost at Vodafone Australia and effects Vodafone New Zealand and Vodafone Fiji.
Update 2: The fault has been recognised to be with the firewall, Engineers looking to fix the issue.

zocster: Thanks to Vodafone that keeping us UP TO DATE, not many other companies do unfortunately.

The issue started on 26th December, they only inform people about it after seven days, a long discussion on a well read forum, and bad publicity on two national newspapers... I can't see where the "keeping us informed" part comes in - unless you are using sarcasm?

I am sure I wouldn't be at all happy for a complete loss of communications during a full week - even more at this time of the year.

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freitasm

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# 102688 3-Jan-2008 13:14

brad_p: ... but still in the grand scheme of things this isn't really a major outage as you could just change networks and your phone would (should?) work as per normal.

An outage that goes for more than one week preventing people travelling to New Zealand's biggest destination to cal back home during Christmas and New Year and you don't think it is a major outage?

Not everyone is savvy enough to know that they would have to manually change networks.

This is a major outage and in the wrong time of the year.

I am not blaming Vodafone New Zealand, but action should have been taken a long time ago as soon as this started showing up.

Once again the large corporations here in New Zealand fail to correctly inform customers of what's going on and how to rectify. The time that took for this probem to be acknowledged was too long.

And if it's true that a firewall is causing this problem, what's the root cause? Who changed the firewall rules or who implemented it? Bring this people to the wall!

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zocster

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# 102689 3-Jan-2008 13:15

Well I only came in to work today and saw that on our support emails, didn't realise that it happened that long ago! In that case, Vodafone, naughty! You need your knuckles smacked.

macjones

103 posts

Master Geek

# 102696 3-Jan-2008 13:38

Services 2G & 3G Voice, Data & Video Calls
Area Affect Vodafone Australia
Outage Start Time 03/01/2008 07:00
Expected Time to Restore (ETR) No ETR
Problem Description Connection to the Network is lost at Vodafone Australia and effects Vodafone New Zealand and Vodafone Fiji. Update 2: The fault has been recognised to be with the firewall, Engineers looking to fix the issue.

--
I thought congestion sounded fishy (as I said before it's not many gigs of data), a firewall issue makes MUCH more sense.....

Mac

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