Vodafone Mobile Broadband - Any Changes Planned In Usage Allowances?

[jdixon85]

I have a 5GB p/month mobile broadband contract as a phone line is not an option for me. I am a heavy internet user and constantly go over my usage allowance. With other network operators offering higher usage allowances and vodafone upgrading to a 14.4mb/s network, is their any plans to offer a greater usage allowance? After all, what good is speeds of 14mb/s when you would use up your allowance so fast?

[jdixon85]

And here are my ping times. Still rather good considering I'm about 10mile away from the nearest 3G mast.

[jdixon85]

It seems it is either site 31190 or 291 that I get my 3G signal from. Could you please check the sites for any problems/maintenance. Thanks

[Retired-Daz_V]

Hey there jdixon85!

It's refreshing to see so much info! Thanks!

Well, I've been looking at our map tool, and the site, 31190, is indeed your local 3G site, but is miles away! I'm impressed with your setup - that antenna is really doing it's job.

As for the site, it does not appear to be suffering any issues - I'm not sure really what to suggest as the distance that you live from it is beyond it's normal design capabilities. It thus would be difficult to raise as a fault as such

I'm not really sure what to suggest - but I will have a colleague in our faults department give it a thorough look over tomorrow, see if his trained eyes can spot anything. Will update you if I find anything. In the meantime, how's connection today? Has there been any fluctuation as to different times of day? Let us know!


Daz

eForum Team

[jdixon85]

Thanks a lot for looking into it for me. The connection performed as in the picture above until around 9am this morning, then it has been at a snails pace since the. I will download a large file from a reliable website and post a picture shortly. I even tried another antenna today but that just gave the same results. So thats a different SIM, Dongle and Antenna I've tried with the same results so it must be my signal or a network problem. I'm just gutted as even though I'm lucky to get 3G at all where I live, I have been getting a good consistent speed of 160KB's for atleast 6 months until now. Thanks for your help with this matter.

[jdixon85]

Well this is my connection whilst downloading iTunes at 9.50PM. It is now impossible to browse the internet whilst downloading a file. Previoulsy I could download atleast 2 files at the same time and still browse the internet ok. I've had trouble signing into msn and Outlook has failed to connect to my imap server a few times. Downloading from the "UseNext" servers won't work at all even though early lastweek I downloaded a couple of large files at a constant 160-180KB's. I used to be able to download a MB in around 7 seconds, now its taking about 1 minute! If it gets any worse I will be down to GPRS speed

[jdixon85]

Well it's getting late again (0:08am) and performance is starting to increase again. Getting over 1mb's but it dies again then goes back up. Surely this must be a network problem? Is their anyway to tell if the site is struggling to supply data? Another strange thing is when I uploaded this picture on photobucket my upload speed was at 40KB's sustained untill the picture completed! I've never had upload speed so fast. Very strange indeed.

[Retired-Daz_V]

Hey jdixon85,

I've been asking around about this, and technically we can't find a fault at all - we're still all surprised you're getting coverage . We've had no reports of similar issues in the immediate range of the cell tower, so can't technically raise this as a fault. There's not much else I can suggest, I'm afraid.

I'll certainly keep my ear to the ground regarding this one, will keep you updated if I learn more.


Daz

eForum Team

[jdixon85]

Well performance has seemed to have improved slighly over the last few days. I'm still not upto a constant 160KB's like I have been, web browsing is perfectly ok it just takes a little while longer to download files. I have ordered a better (10dbi) antenna to see if that improves things. Thanks for your help.

[jdixon85]

Well I am still waiting for my new antenna but tonight I have noticed a big improvement. At first the internet stopped almost all together so I dis-connected then reconnected. The picture below is while I downloaded 60MB of windows 7 updates at around 11PM. Just hope it stays this way. All my screenshots are from my fileserver that is plugged into a cable router to share my vodafone internet over the network (Just incase anyone keeps wondering why Task Manager & SpeedFan are always open).