Data Throttled Abroad

[jsmyth16]

Hi all, first post here. Took out a vodafone contract around 2 months ago to be able to get proper, unrestricted 4G in France this summer. Was previously with Three and 3G roaming & throttling was awful, so I switched. 

I've arrived in France via Eurotunnel, and a group of 5 of us have driven right down to the south of France. 2 of us are on vodafone, 2 on giffgaff, and 1 on BT mobile. The problem is, the 2 vodafone phones are getting awful speeds, on both 3G and 4G, while all other phones work perfectly.

Friends on giffgaff can easily load pages, maps and Spotify easily, all on 3G. Friend on BT Mobile gets 4G and is getting 40+ Mbps. But myself & the other vodafone phone, have not once seen a speed above 0.2 Mbps.

I have tried SFR, Bouygues and Orange, all are the same. The other phones have tried all networks too, and they all work fine.

Vodafones website literally says "We never throttle abroad, so you'll enjoy full speed roaming". This is clearly not the case? I have a Global Roaming plan, and 20GB of data. Could anybody help me?

As an example, I've just taken my vodafone phone and friends BT phone and put them beside each other. Both are connected to exactly the same Cell ID, and using 2600MHz 4G on Orange F. Speed test on BT gives 45Mbps consistently, and loads everything flawlessly. Speedtest on vodafone, gives 0.15 Mbps, and things like Maps, Facebook etc take a few minutes to load. What is going on? :smileysad: I'm going to have to buy a local SIM at this rate, I'm so disappointed in vodafone. 

[amh13]

Still noticeable speed drops here in Italy after around 5-6 o'clock. Speeds drop from 90 Mbits to about 10, not as bad as before, but still definitely throttled

[JOHN-1970]

Good morning Alex, Gemma, Jenny, Natasha et Vodafone Mediator team, 

Please rest assured that I am grateful for your support. Alex whilst my experience of Vodafone's product is disappointing to my own surprise please be assured that I am not frustrated; maybe I am getting too old. To your point however, one can see why this process can be frustrating. Indeed since Aug 5th Vodafone has provided no reasonable explanation to this issue. In fact no explanation at all. Alex I believe you have here an opportunity to help improve Vodafone's quality of service. Notwithstanding the level of service, it remains that Vodafone did not deliver the expected 4G data service for at lease a reasonable period during the contract at a location where the networks SFR and Bouygues have excellent radio signal strenght. I would assume that the networks are dimension to have appropriate resources and capacities. To validate my assumption rest assured I will write to both SFR and Bouygues to request this information for the purpose of my claim and in support of a request to Ofcom to investigate Vodafone data roaming practice and possible descrimination when compared to other customer of Vodafone.

My contract with Vodafone is now reaching its end (Aug 24th). In fact little can be done now other than to ensure all of the information collected has part of your investigation is protected and shall not be destroyed by Vodafone; please consider this as a formal request to Vodafone. If you do not have the authority here, please advise now. 

Above and beyond the technical investigation you've claimed is on-going for which I have no evidence to date, it remains that none of my requests for information in relation to Vodafone's processes, policies and procedures have been appropriately responded to by any member of the mediator team. I thereafter make the request again for this information. 

With regards to costs can you advise on whether (or not) Vodafone will apply all charges or could offer a compensation in the current context? 

Regards,

John 

[Alex]

@JOHN-1970 Please understand that I have read and do appreciate your message. 

As we'll need to access your account to progress with the other side of your query (rather than the coverage), please contact our team using the information in the private message I've sent. 

I know you've filled out a similar form before, however that came through to us in the Network team - this will come into one of our different queues to address the other issues at hand. 

[JOHN-1970]

Interesting reading https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/15/vodafone_customers_complain_data_is_being_throttled_abroad/

[JOHN-1970]

Hi Alex - Could you share the results of the investigation  ?

Thanks

john

[Tash]

Hi @JOHN-1970, our Network engineers are continuing to investigate the case. 

We'll be in touch once we receive an update from them, please be assured that we're continuing to chase this for you :smileyhappy:

[JOHN-1970]

Thanks Natasha for the update  

[Alex]

Hi All,

Our Network engineers have now completed their investigation, they've advised the issues should now be resolved.

If you're still having any trouble with this, please let us know in a reply on this thread and include a screenshot of a speedtest. 

[JOHN-1970]

Thanks Alex, 

What was the issue ?

Regards,

John 

[Alex]

@JOHN-1970 We're unable to give a detailed description of our investigation, however it would appear that one of our firewalls wasn't performing correctly, which was significantly reducing the roaming speeds for some users. 

Since this issue has been addressed, everything should now be back up and running as normal 🙂