Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 and 4g mifi - slow download speeds

[chrismca]

I have a mobile broadband problem that seems to relate specifically to how Vodafone-branded products work together. My phone is a Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 – on “native” 4G this gives me a data download speed of between 40-45 Mb/s. I have just purchased a Vodafone 4G mifi unit with 50 Gb/month rolling contract and I’m only getting a download speed of 2-3 Mb/s when connecting the Ultra 6 to this. All my other equipment (Macbook, Windows 10 PC, Android tablet, iPhone 6 and even an old Motorola Moto G) give download speeds in excess of 20Mb/s. I took the mifi unit and Ultra 6 into my local Vodafone store to see if they had a fix for the slow speeds – the manager there could offer no explanation and had not seen this problem before; he tried connecting his own Vodafone Platinum 7 to the mifi unit and that got surprisingly low download speeds as well (around 7-8 Mb/s) whereas a store iPhone was getting 40 Mb/s or more. All speeds measured using the Ookla Speedtest app. Has anyone else experienced this issue, and if so has a solution (or even a reason) been identified?

[DaneB]

@chrismca

That's strange.

We'd like to look into this further with you.

Please speak with our Broadband Live Chat team to discuss these issues.

Thanks

[chrismca]

I have already spoken to both phone technical support and  mifi support and they have been unable to come up with any answers - apparently there is nothing on their support databases that covers this, and nothing on my account that could be affecting things. The chap on mifi support suggested that Vodafone own-brand phones are built down to a price rather than up to a spec. and therefore I shouldn't expect the same sort of performance that, for example, my wife's iPhone 6 will give. Frankly, this strikes me as rubbish - a few Mb/s lower I could believe, but not a 10-fold difference in download speeds. Also I have tested speeds using my son's Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 (the newer version of my Ultra 6 and so presumably also "built down to a price") and get similar download rates as the iPhone. 

It was also suggested by our local Vodafone store that the problem could be with the wifi aerial in the Smart Ultra 6 not being able to support higher download speeds, but again this seems rubbish as I can connect to a relative's ultrafast broadband via wifi and get download speeds in excess of 50 Mb/s.

All very frustrating as the whole poiint of my purchasing the 4G mifi device is to give me a decent broadband service as living in a fairly rural area I only get around 1 - 1.5 Mb/s opn my landline-based broadband !

I'll try the "live chat" option but based on the above I'm not hopeful......

[Tash]

@chrismca Please let us know if you need any further assistance after speaking with us on Live Chat.

[chrismca]

Reaching the "banging head against brick wall" stage now! Live chat people had nothing on their support system covering this. Suggested either a factory reset on my phone - I'm not keen on that as a). still don't know whether the problem lies with the phone or the 4G mifi device and b). everything else on my phone - including connecting to other high-speed wifi networks - works perfectly. The other option they suggested was to get a Vodafone store to send the phone in for repair - already tried my local store and they didn't seem interested in "owning the problem". Ideally first need to try connecting a different Smart Ultra 6 to my 4G mifi device, and my Smart Ultra 6 to a different 4G mifi device, before taking drastic action that will wipe the phone of my apps and data. 

[Alex]

@chrismca I'm sorry to hear this issue is still ongoing. 

So we're able to look into this further for you, please contact our team using the information I've sent via private message.