Over the last six months, I've been impatiently awaiting the arrival of 900UMTS cellular broadband on my local cellsite. This became a reality about 3 months ago, so I ran out and bought a Vodem Stick. Alas, no signal on 900UMTS, and a weak reception on GPRS. So I reported this to Vodafone, contactiong JohnR through the Vodafone Forum. After trying all his suggestions, I returned the Stick and claimed a refund.

Fast forward to last week. JohnR contacted me with the news that the cellsite was definitely live on 900UMTS, but that to throw a signal to my house, there'd need to be an adjustment made to one of the antennae on the mast. He couriered me a loaned Vodem Stick, and on Friday afternoon we proceeded to "tweak" the cellsite antenna by remote control (they're positioned by wee servo-motors). I watched my signal strength, and reported results.

The upshot of all this is that I now have a steady connection, which hasn't dropped or frozen since Friday afternoon, and gives me 850-950Kb/s down, and 350Kb/s or so up. A huge improvement over my previous GPRS connection!

So a big thank-you to JohnR and the engineering team at Vodafone - this is an outstanding example of excellent service!

Cheers,

George