Whoa - wheres my 4G signal gone - a cautionary tale!

[vegtable]

I have been using 4G using a directional antenna for the past 3 months getting 4 bars and about ~30 to ~45 Mbps.  A week ago the signal dropped to 2 to 3 bars and 5Mbps. Vodafone were working at the mast a week ago - a coincidence, I think not. I did call Vodafone but they didn't admit to changing anything on the mast but clearly they have - I am not the only one effected.

Fortunately I am only paying ~£20 a month for my phone SIM I use in the router. I would be very unhappy if I was locked into a £50 month mobile broadband package with little comeback.

Maybe this is just a temporary issue but I expect not. So, a cautionary tale, you run the risk of committing to a mobile broadband contract and then having your service decimated with no comeback. The silver linning is that a FTTP provider is currently at work in the village. The service won't be up until April / May next year but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

V.

[vegtable]

It has gone down to ~2.5 Mbps now. On 3G I am getting 0.08 Mbps (5 bars). Epic fail Vodafone - what a joke!

V. 

[TJ]

Hey @vegtable, we'll be happy to take a look into your local mast to see what works been done. Please let us know your full postcode, if you're not comfortable posting it on the Vodafone Community; you can get in touch via one of our social channels. Find out how to get in touch here.

[vegtable]

Hi,

The mast I am pointed at is the Penn Hill mast: 51.2370°N 2.6253°W   ST564488.

My postcode is BA53BA.

Clearly something has changed at the mast, either a reduction in power, antenna tilt or something else. I am not the only person impacted. Signal strength is marginal where I live (have never been able to get 4G on a smartphonel) but with a high gain directional antenna on chimney I could get a consistent 4 bars out of 5 on a router and ~30 to ~45Mbps down. For over a week it has been 2 to 3 bars with anything from ~5Mbps to ~15Mbps. I was told that work had been carried out at the mast at around the same time as the signal degregation.

V

[vegtable]

Jeez, just spent 20 minutes being pushed around various people online who were clueless. Did get to speak to somebody on the phone who at least tried to be helpful. They would not tell me what work was carried out at the mast - at first denied there was any work. Just told me it was poor signal in my area. That does not explain why I had months of OK signal and now crappy signal. 

I guess I have no option but to go back to my FWA provider for now or stick with it until FTTP comes. It is very dissapointing that Vodafone can't or wont resolve this issue. Wish I had not cancelled the other provider - I had left it a couple of months to see if the 4G would work out.

I think the lesson to learn from this is not to trust mobile broadband if a reliable service is important to you. 

V

[TJ]

Thanks for providing those details @vegtable. I've taken a look at your local mast (277) and everything seems to be working fine at the moment. There was some work done to the mast around the start of December, from what it says; it looks like this was done to improve the security and stability of the live network. Notes left by the Engineers advise this should have only caused very small amount of disruption, if any. 

We can get a case raised to our Network Engineers to investigate the problems you've been having further. We'd need to take some personal details from you though, so we'd need to get this raised via one of our social channels here.

[vegtable]

@TJ

I have cut my loses. Service has deteriorated further - 1 bar sometimes now and losing Internet completely.  Today the service has been out completely about 10% of the time. Support staff on phone are in denial - everybody I talk to says there is no problem, well I beg to differ - there is a problem from my perspective. I have wasted too much time with this. I will never use Vodafone again, I will never recommend anyboy else uses Vodafone. I have 3 contracts with Vodafone - one I can cencel straight away, the others have about 6 months to run - I will not renew. I work from home due to medical reasons and need reliable Internet. My office and home phones are SIP VOIP phones and they die when the Internet goes down. Work is impossible. I would be OK if there had never been a signal but I was getting a consistent, solid 4 bars for months and now 1 to 3. Not getting over 10Mbps at best now and sometimes nothing at all. I am in the process of awitching back to FWA broadband provider - hope they can get me up and running before Christmas.

This whole experience has been a big waste of time and money, £100 antenna, £80 router, installing antenna on Chimney, 6 months of worthless contract left to run, activation fee to sign back up to old provider. 

This forum is interesting as well. Can't get over all the posts about people trying to port forward and Vodafone moderators telling them it is because they are not using Vodafone hardware or not configuring the router properly. The reason is Vodafone use CGNAT and port forwarding is never going to work. I can't figure out if it is intentional mis-information or plain incometance?

I know that customer churn is part and parcel of the mobile business and the one redeeming thing about Vodafone is, in my opinion, the suresignal femto cell which is really great and a differentiator compared to the competition if you live in a poor signal area, but enough is enough for me. Bye, have a Merry Christmas.

[vegtable]

@TJ

Not sure if you saw my reply. Hope you see it this time:

Re: Whoa - wheres my 4G signal gone - a cautionary tale! 

Hi,

The mast I am pointed at is the Penn Hill mast: 51.2370°N 2.6253°W   ST564488.

My postcode is BA53BA.

Clearly something has changed at the mast, either a reduction in power, antenna tilt or something else. I am not the only person impacted. Signal strength is marginal where I live (have never been able to get 4G on a smartphonel) but with a high gain directional antenna on chimney I could get a consistent 4 bars out of 5 on a router and ~30 to ~45Mbps down. For over a week it has been 2 to 3 bars with anything from ~5Mbps to ~15Mbps. I was told that work had been carried out at the mast at around the same time as the signal degregation.

V

[vegtable]

Hi,

The mast I am pointed at is the Penn Hill mast: 51.2370°N 2.6253°W   ST564488.

My postcode is BA53BA.

Clearly something has changed at the mast, either a reduction in power, antenna tilt or something else. I am not the only person impacted. Signal strength is marginal where I live (have never been able to get 4G on a smartphonel) but with a high gain directional antenna on chimney I could get a consistent 4 bars out of 5 on a router and ~30 to ~45Mbps down. For over a week it has been 2 to 3 bars with anything from ~5Mbps to ~15Mbps. I was told that work had been carried out at the mast at around the same time as the signal degregation.

V

[Anonymous]

I am sorry that you're having trouble with 4G speed.  This could be down to many reasons including:

• Upgrades causing stronger signal, more people on the mast, overloaded.

I've had a look and the Mendip Transmitter, is not currently showing any faults on the network status checker.

I hope your service improves.

[vegtable]

Well, today the signal is back to 4 bars after months of poor signal. Bandwidth is 35Mbps+. Whatever was broken is fixed for now (no changes made on my end). However, it has been months and customer service has been worse than useless.

Anyway, another SP is laying fibre down my road next week. It will be a few weeks / months before houses are connected up. Guarnteed 200Mbps+ symetrical. Bye bye Vodafone. 

I might keep my phone on Vfe and if the FTTP happens to go down I can put phone SIM in router as a backup solution but really had my fingers burnt with trying to use Vfe mobile as primary broadband.

V