I’ve got a Vodafone Pay As You Go sim. It’s currently in the LG Shine which I am still testing flaunting on trains and in public places.
Yesterday I arrived at Mansefield House, Arrochar, Scotland, filled with delight at the house and it’s location. However, there is no T-Mobile signal. At ALL. None. Now and again the ‘3G’ label pops up but not even a signal name appears. Well and truly out of range.
I turned to my Three UK handset. 3 bars out of 6. Patchy but, you know, workable. So workable, that the data was flying via X-Series phenomenally well.
But when it came to making a reliable call, I ended up using the LG Shine and the Vodafone sim.
‘Call me back please?’ I asked my colleague Hetty.
‘Sure,’ she replied, rather surprised at me asking. I’ve got a flippin’ great Flext package on T-Mobile so I’m normally the one calling everyone.
‘I, er, have a few pence left on my Voda credit,’ I explained.
She called. We talked. It worked. Brilliant.
The same again on the train to Scotland. As we’re passing through the Scottish borders, I was LITERALLY going from T-Mobile, ‘Hi, can you hear me? Right, yes carry on… HELLO? HELLO?’ to Three UK and back for about 30 minutes. It was an important call. Important enough to arse around calling the person from multiple networks.
Just as the T-Mobile one was cutting out the Three UK one was coming into full signal range… I was getting about 45 seconds per call.
The handovers were just appalling. I know it’s Scotland. I know it’s border country. But it’s just … I eventually got out the Vodafone sim and used that — I blew 30p a minute for a proper 5 minute phone call that *WORKED* without dropping.
Whatever your perspective on Big Red and whatever the numbskull things their direction team come out with, it does work.
The irony was not lost on me: I’m using broadband internet at 100mph on the train and I can’t get 4k/sec through my T-Mobile or Three reliably to maintain an consistent audio conversation. Yet Vodafone was wickedly good.
I dunno. Their price plans for data are just prohibitive. I object to it.
The 100mb data plan they’re muting for March isn’t sufficient for me. It will be for a lot of people I’m sure, but not for me. I have used about 80mb in two days here in Scotland.
I wouldn’t mind too much paying extra for the Vodafone voice calls to have the confidence of an ultra reliable, ultra clear signal.
But the data policy kills it for me. Still doesn’t work.
And when I’m in London, (and I usually am) T-Mobile and Three and perfectly fine.
Apart from on the train….
This is what I don’t get about the mobile operators in the UK. they have completely forgotten what their core competence is, or should be. So lets spell it out for them…..
“You exist to let people make phone calls. End of.”
If you can’t do that then stop arsing about with fancy gimmicky applications that frankly the world would survive without if you took them away, and start making sure people can make phone calls.
Imagine if we went to a big Tesco’s store and all over the walls were big signs saying “we now have in-store 24Gb wi-fi internet connection so you can surf while you shop”. But 50% of the items on your shopping list were out of stock because they had spent all their budget on pointless gimmicky wi-fi instead of a decent food ordering system. You wouldn’t be impressed would you; so why do we put up from it from mobile operators!?
It’s time for a reality check guys…
steve/itagg.com