2degrees roaming on Vodafone network.

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#1461505 5-Jan-2016 11:49

ajobbins: I dropped 2D in favour of VF recently. When travelling around NZ I was constantly in and out of coverage, often with "Emergency Calls Only" when my wife had good coverage on Vodafone. The roaming, particularly in areas where 2D have some coverage but it's patchy is very problematic. In and around cities 2D was fine, but moving around it was a nightmare.

Rurally the amount of places where I have Spark but no 2degrees or Vodafone can be a bit disappointing, but not enough to make the effort of changing worthwhile.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

GEOMAX

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#1461591 5-Jan-2016 12:47

Hi there, I understand you have emailed us on this. However we need specific info for our Tech Support team to look into this and try to isolate it to your phone, SIM or network and escalate to our RF team if necessary.

This is becoming very frustrating filling in forms all requesting similar info and nobody SEEING my request PLEASE RING ME!!!!

On sunday afternoon there was a lot of activity obviously refreshing the local site . Not sure yet if things are better.

One of the questions regarding others with problems....all I get from friends is hysterical laughter
and "throw away the SIM and go to Vodafone"

Anybody know of similar connected 2degrees SIMs

GEOMAX

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#1461615 5-Jan-2016 13:14

toejam316:
2degreesCare:

I can probably help a bit, pm me if you want more info.
Basic rundown is anywhere in Leamington (basically the east side of the Waikato River) suffers terrible 2degrees reception, jumping betweening roaming, EDGE and 3g to the point of being unusuable without standing and holding the phone in perfect position to get a HSDPA connection, although on Shakespeare St its OK. I've experienced this with a S4 (2degrees standard one), a S5 (Gm900F) and my current Nexus 6P. It wasn't as severe when the COW was outside the CB exchange, but it still wasn't fantastic. The ideal solution would be to deploy a COW or permanent cell (even an infill cell would probably do, at a guess) in Leamington.

Also a bit of band 28 LTE wouldn't go amiss - the LTE in Cambridge barely reaches the telephone exchange.

Thanks for that. I feel like a lone voice looking for answers. My simple view was why does roaming not kick in outside the dark grey coverage area? Right up by Leamington School with no bars showing it connects you with sub standard service and cuts out if you move. What is wrong?

sidefx

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#1461808 5-Jan-2016 17:09

ajobbins: I dropped 2D in favour of VF recently. When travelling around NZ I was constantly in and out of coverage, often with "Emergency Calls Only" when my wife had good coverage on Vodafone. The roaming, particularly in areas where 2D have some coverage but it's patchy is very problematic. In and around cities 2D was fine, but moving around it was a nightmare.

I moved my wife to 2d from Vodafone, but am finding the same thing. My Vodafone (work) mobile has perfect signal and wife's has zero 2d but refuses to roam onto Vodafone network. I've ensured roaming is on and tried forcing Vodafone but it doesn't seem to work. This is happening mostly in the coromandel where we holiday often. I'm thinking of just switching her back to Vodafone.

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." | Octopus Energy | Sharesies
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ajobbins

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#1461811 5-Jan-2016 17:16

sidefx:
ajobbins: I dropped 2D in favour of VF recently. When travelling around NZ I was constantly in and out of coverage, often with "Emergency Calls Only" when my wife had good coverage on Vodafone. The roaming, particularly in areas where 2D have some coverage but it's patchy is very problematic. In and around cities 2D was fine, but moving around it was a nightmare.

I moved my wife to 2d from Vodafone, but am finding the same thing. My Vodafone (work) mobile has perfect signal and wife's has zero 2d but refuses to roam onto Vodafone network. I've ensured roaming is on and tried forcing Vodafone but it doesn't seem to work. This is happening mostly in the coromandel where we holiday often. I'm thinking of just switching her back to Vodafone.

Mine roamed on Vodafone, but it was patchy and slow. When you're on the road, you don't want to be trying to manually register to networks etc to ensure you can take a call if needed - it should just work and it didn't. At one point I was in the passengers seat between Auckland and Tauranga while my wife was driving. I was trying to check twitter, facebook etc but the phone kept chopping between Vodafone roaming, 2D coverage but about half the time was Emergency Calls Only. In the end, I just used her phone (on Vodafone) and I don't think it lost signal once the entire trip.

Twitter: ajobbins

dan

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#1461826 5-Jan-2016 17:57

this was one of the reasons i dropped 2degrees, drive somewhere out of Auckland where it needs to roam on Vodafone, and the phone has often has no coverage until you reboot or enable/disable flight mode.

same issue driving back into auckland from where it was roaming

it happened alot on my samsung note 3 (account), brothers various asus android phones (prepay) and also on my wifes htc one (prepay)

richms

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#1461834 5-Jan-2016 18:11

The whole roaming onto someone elses network doesnt seem to work well for the mobile part of mobile phones.

I found when I tried some GPS trackers on 2degrees that they would just lose data when moving one way or the other, only way to get them working again was to either powercycle them, or else SMS them the APN details again to get them to re-establish the connection. Seems the same happens on phones often when on 2G, show as having a connection but no data flows till they either kick up to 3G or you airplane mode them for a bit.

Richard rich.ms

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toejam316

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#1461838 5-Jan-2016 18:19

richms: The whole roaming onto someone elses network doesnt seem to work well for the mobile part of mobile phones.

I found when I tried some GPS trackers on 2degrees that they would just lose data when moving one way or the other, only way to get them working again was to either powercycle them, or else SMS them the APN details again to get them to re-establish the connection. Seems the same happens on phones often when on 2G, show as having a connection but no data flows till they either kick up to 3G or you airplane mode them for a bit.

Probably a side effect of roaming on an adjacent network instead of a foriegn network.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

Aredwood

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#1462030 5-Jan-2016 23:22

I must be doing something wrong. As I get good coverage on 2deg and my phone roams perfectly fine when it needs to. (including data) Check that your phone supports 900MHz 3g. As there are phones out there that only support 900MHz on 2g (They support 850Mhz on 3g so get good coverage on Spark but poor coverage on 2deg, Which explains those who say they get good Spark coverage). If you use one on 2deg you end up with lots of data dropouts and poor signal. (and roaming issues). As phone will be trying to roam to Vodafone 3G yet remain on 2deg 2g. (call handover between 3g - 2g would get interesting)

Only times I have had problems was roaming was with 2x 2deg sims. (my phone is Dual Sim and I don't think the phone could handle both sims roaming at the same time to the same network.) And other time was when both 2deg and Vodafone were both very weak. (phone couldn't decide which network to use so was constantly switching between them).

richms

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#1462032 5-Jan-2016 23:24

My GPS trackers are GPRS only so no issues with 2G-3G handover.

Phone was a note 3, has all the bands that were in use at the time. Lacks 700MHz 4G but thats all a bit meh at the moment on a phone.

Richard rich.ms

maxzzz

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#1462062 6-Jan-2016 00:18

I have a similar problem with my wife's Galaxy S4, it often looses data completely while we are on the road out of Hamilton and has difficulties to roam to the VF network without a on/off flight mode switch.
Moreover this whole roaming thing seems to use lots of battery power because since I have locked her phone to the VF network only (via roaming) she has nearly no more dropouts and back to a normal battery life.
I am still thinking of switching her to Skinny as she is on prepay and it will be cheaper for probably a better service anyway.

On my Sony Z1 I have less issues roaming onto VF when driving out of town but during the switch I often have disconnections which affects my Pandora streaming... I'm a big fan of 2D because they have disrupted the mobile phone pricing in NZ, I understand they were the last here and need to continue to build their own network but I think they should seriously improve their coverage outside of towns.

nzkiwiman

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#1462171 6-Jan-2016 10:19

So I am not the only one this happens to.
Good to know ..

ajobbins

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#1462196 6-Jan-2016 11:01

Aredwood: Check that your phone supports 900MHz 3g

Yup - My Nexus 5 has 900mhz 3G, so that's not the issue.

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KiwiSurfer

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#1462267 6-Jan-2016 12:55

Country to popular knowledge, 2degrees technically does not allow roaming to all Vodafone sites outside their coverage area. Vodafone breaks their network up into groups of cell sites (identified by the Location Area Code [LAC] on GSM and I think the UTRAN Registration Area [URA] on UMTS). Due to GSM/UMTS technical limitations, 2degrees/Vodafone can only permit or block access to each LAC/URA group as a whole rather than the individual towers within the group. I'm happy to stand corrected on this part though.

When 2degrees first started they were pretty liberal, allowing roaming to a long list of LAC groups. For example for some time, all of West Auckland west of Henderson had roaming permitted as Vodafone had a LAC covering the area from Henderson all the way across to the West Coast. 2degrees had no choice but to permit roaming across that entire area (including lots of places they had their own coverage) or block access to a lot of Vodafone sites out west. I'm pretty sure this is no longer the case though.

Another example is the Wairewa thermal pools. Vodafone (and Spark) has a site near the township providing good coverage to the pools. However 2degrees does not (or they did not last time I went). Since that particular Vodafone site is part of a LAC that 2degrees have forbidding roaming in, 2degrees customers are forced to to use alternative sites with very poor signal strength At the time a mate only had 1 bar of GPRS coverage on his phone whereas I had full bars of 3G.

The fact (1) it's not possible to enable roaming just for one site and (2) that 2degrees must carefully choose which LAC/URA groups they want to permit roaming to makes it a balancing act for 2degrees. If they are too liberal they lose money with people roaming on Vodafone in areas they could be roaming on 2degrees. If they are too conservative it causes some of the issues in this thread.

The fact is if you want good, consistent coverage you need to go with a provider that have their own infrastructure in the places you go to. 2degrees is good only if you stay within their coverage most of the time (e.g. for work purposes you need to be contactable at all times) and don't mind putting up with issues when you travel on holidays or whenever it's not vital that you need access to good coverage. The choice is yours really.

- James

GEOMAX

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#1462520 6-Jan-2016 17:53

KiwiSurfer: Country to popular knowledge, 2degrees technically does not allow roaming to all Vodafone sites outside their coverage area. Vodafone breaks their network up into groups of cell sites (identified by the Location Area Code [LAC] on GSM and I think the UTRAN Registration Area [URA] on UMTS). Due to GSM/UMTS technical limitations, 2degrees/Vodafone can only permit or block access to each LAC/URA group as a whole rather than the individual towers within the group. I'm happy to stand corrected on this part though.

When 2degrees first started they were pretty liberal, allowing roaming to a long list of LAC groups. For example for some time, all of West Auckland west of Henderson had roaming permitted as Vodafone had a LAC covering the area from Henderson all the way across to the West Coast. 2degrees had no choice but to permit roaming across that entire area (including lots of places they had their own coverage) or block access to a lot of Vodafone sites out west. I'm pretty sure this is no longer the case though.

Another example is the Wairewa thermal pools. Vodafone (and Spark) has a site near the township providing good coverage to the pools. However 2degrees does not (or they did not last time I went). Since that particular Vodafone site is part of a LAC that 2degrees have forbidding roaming in, 2degrees customers are forced to to use alternative sites with very poor signal strength At the time a mate only had 1 bar of GPRS coverage on his phone whereas I had full bars of 3G.

The fact (1) it's not possible to enable roaming just for one site and (2) that 2degrees must carefully choose which LAC/URA groups they want to permit roaming to makes it a balancing act for 2degrees. If they are too liberal they lose money with people roaming on Vodafone in areas they could be roaming on 2degrees. If they are too conservative it causes some of the issues in this thread.

The fact is if you want good, consistent coverage you need to go with a provider that have their own infrastructure in the places you go to. 2degrees is good only if you stay within their coverage most of the time (e.g. for work purposes you need to be contactable at all times) and don't mind putting up with issues when you travel on holidays or whenever it's not vital that you need access to good coverage. The choice is yours really.

- James

I think you may mean LCA (local calling area)
Cambridge is a part of the Hamilton LCA.
When I joined 2Degrees on day 1 Cambridge was all roaming on Vodafone.Pretty good taken all round. The COW in central Cambridge improved things for me marginally.
The new site by the lake has degraded service this side of the river.( the COW was removed) The new site on Maungakawa hill has improved service in new Cambridge east and at Karapiro . Service at Leamington east of Leamington's Shakespeare street seems to have deteriorated in recently times. My normal roaming areas to Hamilton, Rotorua, Tauranga and east of Gisborne for Holidays have been perfect. My problem is I want to go shopping locally I have to go through a resetting routine.
Is this asking too much?

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