Hello everyone,
A quick update from Durham where I was staying in the city for a few days, right in the centre, next to the river. When I got off the train and turned off aeroplane mode which was on to save battery, my phone couldn't get on to the network for at least 30 seconds but eventually did though it had a "no data" warning on the screen for at least another minute. I got to my hotel and despite a full 4G signal or almost full, it varied minute by minute, I could not get the browser, the internet radio or the YouTube client to work. Calls worked and the messenger app I use worked albeit slowly, e.g. sending a photograph could take two or three minutes to send. Unfortunately I didn't get back to my hotel until very late each night but when I did, everything worked. Browser, radio, YouTube client and photos sent on the messenger app went almost instantly. The 4G signal strength was the same as during the daytime. One morning, I woke early, around 6:00 am. Everything worked. I had a long day ahead so I decided to download a few videos to watch on my train journey back to the city that evening. I was able to: • Check emails; • Download videos; • Listen to internet radio; all at the same time. Until roughly 7:30 am, when it started to get a bit janky. By 8:00 am, it was back to the situation I experienced on the day I arrived. Only phone calls and the messenger app (at a very slow rate) worked. This happened every morning and confirms, I'm sure, that saturation of the network is the problem. From circa 7:45 am until time unknown but I'm guessing some time in the early to mid-evening, the situation mirrored the one I experienced in London almost a year ago. Full or almost full signal but no or very limited data flow. I think the question is simply one of "Why has Vodafone let this happen?". They must have been able to monitor and analyze network traffic with each passing month and year and identify the cells which were reaching saturation point. Why was nothing done to enhance capacity or, if something was done, why was it not done with enough forethought that the solution was able to deal with the problem for a length of time or perhaps at all? Why do other networks, specifically EE as an example, not seem to suffer this problem or at least not so badly? Has the Vodafone network been an unfortunate victim of circumstances within the technical evolution as well as over-demand from customer devices? Was there and is there just not enough financial reserve for the company to keep the infrastructure in a state that it can meet the demand? With the approval of the merger with Three, I can only hope that together, the two networks can get these capacity issues ironed out. For at least a decade now, companies I've worked for have promoted a viewpoint that using electronic devices to manipulate and disseminate data is " better for the planet" than using paper and ink. Paper and ink didn't become unusable during office hours due to it being used by too many people at once though.
