100% proof that Vodafone is doing something with the services.

[GreatBritian]

Hello.

Unforunately after speaking to multiple departments within Vodafone it appears no-one is able to take my concerns seriously in regards to the Unlimited Max Plan, and I have found no real way of sending proof of what is actually happening to your agents so I have had to as a last resort record a video of what is happening in my area and uploaded it to YouTube in hope that the Social Media Team members will look at this and liaise with the Technical Department to investigate this.

Please see the below YouTube video URL for proof that something is 100% going on with the connection.

https://youtu.be/Oy6zoV5_HlU

(The device in question is a Note 10 Plus 5G)

In this video you will see me performing a speedtest made using the SpeedTest App available on the PlayStore showing what appears to be throttled speed without the use of a VPN (Speeds of usually up to 10Mb/s although this test got slightly more) and then performing the test again using a VPN (ExpressVPN) which will significantly increase the speeds.

Please understand that this is taken in the exact same place and the only difference is the fact that i'm connected to a VPN.

I appreciate that I have been dealing with the Vodafone's Directors Office (They themselves admitted they are not technically trained) and I appreciate the steps which my complaint handler has performed to my account in a attempt to resolve the issue and the discount provided to me, however I do feel that Vodafone hasn't properly taken into account my concerns and raised a full investigation to figure out what is actually going on and made no attempt at actually investigating the issues raised with them. I do feel like I have been brushed off with a Discount which I admit is appreciated everyone loves a discount but I think someone from the Technical Team would be more ideal to conduct a full investigation into what is actually happening.

I have no idea what is going on with the service and why this is the way it is. I have had a browse through the Vodafone Forum and have noticed multiple people posting near enough the same issue on Vodafone's Broadband Package users, whilst I don't see this mentioned much for Mobile Devices or Mobile Plans. I appear to of read a potential Routing Issue with Vodafone or something along those lines not that long ago.

I will say that I am located within the Kingston Upon Hull area which I am believing that CityFibre have something to do with it, but the same happened in Manchester which is confusing. I have used every major Mobile Network in this area such as O2, Three and EE and I have never experienced this kind of issue with them.

It's also worth noting that I do like Vodafone, I've been on Voxi before and loved them. All I ask is that Vodafone takes my concerns seriously and notice there's a major issue rather than just dismissing them with a Discount or a Account refresh (Disabling Sim and Re-enabling) which has been performed twice now. I want Vodafone to take this message seriously and conduct a full investigation into the concerns raised and speak to the people who deal with the Masts and figure out what is actually going on.

Tried and tested activies in a attempt to resolve the issues include.

- Connecting to a VPN - Worked and made a massive difference as shown in the Video above

- Changing the device - This made no difference

- Changing the Sim Card - This made no difference

- Changing the DNS to 1.1.1.1/8.8.4.4 - This made no difference

- Manually selecting another network and then back to Vodafone - This made no difference

- Refreshing the APN settings - This made no difference

- Having my account Refreshed - This made no difference

I have done a Traceroute test to try and help Vodafone locate the issues with which server address's my requests are going through.

(On all the Traceroute tests I have completed numbers 2, 5 and 6 have timed out regardless of where it's going to).

Tracing route to google.co.uk [216.58.213.3]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.129

  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  3    71 ms     *        *     192.168.213.21

  4    39 ms    40 ms    38 ms  192.168.213.22

  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  7    41 ms    38 ms    41 ms  63.130.127.221

  8    60 ms    40 ms    37 ms  90.255.251.18

  9    38 ms    39 ms    40 ms  108.170.246.161

 10    46 ms    40 ms    40 ms  172.253.65.211

 11    57 ms    42 ms    38 ms  ber01s14-in-f3.1e100.net [216.58.213.3]

I would love other people to share their input on this forum post if they have had the same kind of issue and if Vodafone was able to resolve the issue how and what actions where taken to the account to resolve the issue.

I would appreciate it if the Social Media Team members could forward this to someone in the Technical Team within Vodafone who can take a look at this video and information presented through the Traceroute and figure out what is going on and investigate to come up with a solution for this issue.

[Evie]

Hey there @Lynxthecat - We do appreciate your ongoing patience with us, this is being investigated on social media and any updates will be advised via that platform 😊 I can see that we are are monitoring this for you

[Lynxthecat]

Any update here? Are we making any progress? So far it seems nothing has changed. How long is too long to wait for a network fault to get resolved? Over a month? Because that's how long we've been waiting now. 

We are still seeing 10Mbit/s throttling on port 443. 

[MarkD]

Hey @Lynxthecat, I can see the team have sent you a message on the social media channel with some information about the next steps 🙂

[Lynxthecat]

We are approaching two months now, and yet still we are seeing 10 Mbit/s throttling on port 443 our unlimited MAX account (and all three SIMs, in fact). 

As for the original poster, we have had to resort to corresponding with Ofcom vis-à-vis net neutrality, see:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/advice/net-neutrality.

Please can Vodafone outline the steps it has taken in addressing this matter?

[Lynxthecat]

For anybody curious about this issue I pretty much just gave up. Vodafone customer service is abysmal. I had imagined the media coverage about the state of its customer service would lead to change, but sadly it seems that it has not. 

So rather than persist with individuals who could either not care less or lacked the technical competence to comprehend and address this issue, I just accepted some pretty hefty compensation and signed up to a decent VPN service. 

Vodafone 4G still intermittently applies 10Mbit/s throttling on https port 443 - but comprehending what this means to a sufficient degree to actually address it appears beyond the technical competence of those at Vodafone that looked into this. After all of the above - video evidence, detailed technical explanations, test cases, etc., and after waiting for weeks to hear back from supposedly the highest level of technical support, I would ultimately get relayed back such fatuous remarks as: 'the average download speed [so across all ports, not just 443] in your area is >20Mbit/s so there cannot be any throttling' and/or 'can you perform a new speed test on speedtest.net [which does not use port 443] and provide screenshots'. So we just went in circles, and much time was ultimately wasted. A huge exercise in incompetence.

I referred the matter to Ofcom, so perhaps that will lead to change given that this is a clear violation of net-neutrality. Data should never be selectively throttled in this way.

Come on Vodafone - you can do better than this! What ever happened to the pursuit of excellence?

[purrbox]

You may just be unfortunate enough to live near a mast that's not very good.

I travel all over and for the most part I get amazing 4G speeds on Vodafone. I was with Three for 10 years and rarely got 10mb/s. Most of the time, it was around 4mb/s.

It's counter productive for an ISP to just throttle your connection (this isn't Virgin Media). However, if you are doing something that's detrimental to the rest of us then they should shape your traffic. If you look at Three's network, it's full of people who just buy sims just to tether broadband to their entire house, the whole network is now slow and unusable. 

[Lynxthecat]

Well our connection to our local mast is excellent - as I write this here are the LTE stats:

RSRQ -7.0dB

RSRP -91dBm

RSSI -79dBm

SINR 23dB

Vodafone sell various tiers of 4G plan - throttled to 2MBit/s; throttled to 10Mbit/s and so called max-unlimited (unthrottled). 

Throttling in dependence upon traffic type (here 10Mbit/s throttling specifically on port 443) is a violation of the net neutrality provisions, see here:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/internet-and-on-demand-research/net-neutrality

The throttling occurred on multiple SIMs with varying degrees of usage, and in respect of more than one mast. So this is not confined to a single mast, as I had originally suspected.

This thread (from the original post up until this one) aptly demonstrates:

a) Vodafone customer service is dire; 

b) it takes Ofcom involvement before such a serious matter is addressed; and

c) Vodafone are in violation of net neutrality provisions.

The one positive thing that I can report is that Vodafone admitted that there were grave issues in respect of the handling of the complaint we raised.

I would like to think that with time Vodafone will improve its customer service and its handling of technical issues. But look at this thread; same thing happened all over again. Perhaps sometime in the future someone else will continue the discussion on this same thread with the exact same issue. Only time will tell.

[purrbox]

They are not in violation of net neutrality laws. 

The 2mb/s and 10mb/s are global speed limits for specific products. It's no different than talk talk offering 38mb/s fibre. All Internet services are throttled in that respect. 

We all think the 2mb/s product is stingy. However, it's useful for people that rarely use mobile data. There must be a market for it or they wouldn't bother. One of my work sites has a 2 mb/s connection (no fibre or mobile signal available) , it's slow bit still usable.

10mb/s is fine for 99.9% of mobile usage.

[Lynxthecat]

The posts above relate to the selective application of 10Mbit/s throttling on port 443 on the so-called unlimited MAX contract. That is to say, data packets are handled differently depending on what they are. That is a violation of net neutrality. Let alone false advertising.

[vinod]

Whilst am not an ‘ambassador’ or PRO of Vodafone Plc, I also find it very hard to digest the assertion here that Vodafone are in violation/acting against NN principles. I agree,  a customer may have their own reasons to make such arguments, however, at corporate/board level this

is something that they will not

encourage, because shareholders/investors take it very seriously. Please note throttling( or traffic shaping) a connection session from a device to provide a service is not considered as against NN, which appears to be the case here from various posts. There are so many ‘parameters’ here and there is no reason why/how Vodafone can do the same to selective customers with a set of 4G/LTE client device configurations or at their network switches.