Quiz: How long does it take a mobiile company to fix coverage on a farm?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Quiz: How long does it take a mobiile company to fix coverage on a farm?

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richms

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#450183 20-Mar-2011 21:57

IMO the telco have no problem to fix right now. You have a handset that is having problems when roaming between VF and 2? - untill you take steps to prove either way if it is a problem for the telco to resolve, they will do nothing, because they do not have a problem.

If I was in CS at 2degrees, I would just offer you a full refund on the handset to see the back of the issues because I somehow doubt that they would ever have a return on any troubleshooting for one person having an issue in one location that the person with the issue is not prepared to assist in resolving. I am just wondering what you expect 2degrees to do inorder to try to solve this alleged problem with their network?

Richard rich.ms

DonGould

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#450184 20-Mar-2011 22:02

quickymart: ! I'm confused. Are you actually going to even bother to try another handset this time, or...?

No.

Ok, perhaps it's time to wrap this up with an explanation of why I called it a quiz.

The fault has actually been fixed twice.

Not only did 2Deg move within days to follow up a public posting, in which I even declared that I didn't really care to much, they followed the issue though to the point where today the 2Deg coverage in the area shows 4 of 5 bars and data coverage works reasonably well.

However they must have also worked with the VF network team to improve the roaming hand over at the edge of the network because 5 weeks ago the VF coverage on the 8150 did improve and the handset didn't lock up.

Personally I've worked with providers on coverage issues for over 2 decades in two countries.

I've never seen this level of out standing service from a telco in the past - NEVER.

I posted the questions because I was interested to hear the time frames that you guys might expect this sort of issue to take to fix.

The answers were very interesting.

I agree with Talkiet who said it presents a tough business case.

Hence I also agree with Mark and Steve who suggest that it just might not get fixed.

IN case anyone missed it there's been a massive earth quake in this part of the country. So the absolute last thing I was expecting to see today, while on the farm, was a working mobile phone.

Stunned, is all I could say when I noticed my SIP client was connected.

D

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Foo

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#450185 20-Mar-2011 22:08

Yes, that is very impressive and some exceptional service which totally exceeds any expectation anyone here seems to have (myself included).

I imagine 2degrees (or was it Vodafone) were able to increase the signal to improve things for you? I suspect that doesn't come at much of a cost to the business (correct me if I am wrong).

Dare I ask why they had to fix it twice though?

NonprayingMantis

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#450206 20-Mar-2011 22:59

do you know they actually did something, or could it just be that they already had coverage updates planned for that area and it was a coincidence?

the reason I ask is that if they had to put new celltower down then this would have taken months at the very least purely because of resource consent type issues.

it it wasn't this size of a fix, and just a tweak to some settings, then I think your OP is being a bit disingenuous. you implied an issue which would cost a telco tens of thousands to fix, which is why people were answering long time scales. If that is not the case then people's answers would be quite different.

Talkiet

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#450208 20-Mar-2011 23:03

Further, do you know that it was a specific 'fix' or improvement in response to your fault?

Perhaps it's a transient issue, perhaps VF/2D relaxed some restrictions due to the quake to improve service in these exceptional services - I don't know.

Maybe cell breathing? Maybe temporary power increases to cov er for some broken stuff?

Could be a heap of things.

It would be important to realise that although you have gone from not having service to having service in this location - it may not be permanent and it may not have been in direct response to your inquiries.

I stand by my earlier comment that a single user at one location presents a challenging busuiness case (See note 1)

Cheers - N

Note 1: No way in H*ll.

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

GH33

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#450220 20-Mar-2011 23:53

9 years

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freitasm

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#450242 21-Mar-2011 07:25

This is not a quiz, it's a poll. And with a loaded question (but all polls are, right?)

To answer your question: the eternity. Why? I don't believe the customer is always right, and I don't believe when the customer is wrong and shouts louder than others then things should be done quickly to quiet said customer.

My reasoning? It's a on/off affair. It sounds to me there's coverage, but fringe. This could be because of panel orientation (telcos will try to cover the areas that benefit more people), cell site breathing (more people using the cell site causes its coverage to reduce), and even the user's handsets capabilities (or lack of).

If you get a Vodafone handset and test with a Vodafone SIM card and it works all the time, switch providers. If you do the same with a Telecom handset and SIM card and it works, switch providers. It's not like we don't have options to try this time around.

It could be all at the same time. The fact you previously refused (and admitted in this topic it was lazy attitude) to do a basic troubleshooting to see if the handset capabilities could be eliminated, plus your previous comment about putting more resources into a problem instead of working smarter to eliminate the problem tells me we don't know the whole situation.

So ETERNITY it is, since you want an answer to a poll.

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