VF and Screw-up ...... surely not

Have you tried dealing with Vodafone's highly regarded, award winning customer service? They will surely fix the issue in minutes

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enf...ases/cw_01165/

Maybe Openreach are contributing to holding up the rollout, all the more rural VF sites local to me have been CTILd after fibre has been introduced to the local exchange. Maybe where they are adding O2 it is a requirement as they may not have MW backhaul in place whereas VF already do or decided to go straight to fibre.

Looking at the predicted coverage VF map it follows this same Openreach rollout so VF delays may be hardware & Openreach related.

An area getting consumer fibre broadband shouldn't hold that up.

Even in the middle of nowhere, you can have a fibre optic line installed to a cell site or premises. It'll cost a lot of money, but it can be done. Your local schools or hospitals have likely had fibre to the premises for years before you'll ever get it at home, for example.

Agreed the company next door to us has fibre for years but the cabinet at the end of the road does not.

If Openreach had orders for lines but delayed the provision in order to coincide with other works this in turn delays the CTIL rollout as they have the poorest backhaul they need the most upgrades.

Fair bit coming on in Devon which is nice to see at last. Still mostly towns but it doesn't look quite so shameful now!

I'd have to dig out my SIM to check if that has changed - but it's less than six months ago that I last looked.

If you look online it would seem that way, but I've got a PAYG SIM for data only (sold as an iPad SIM) and before Christmas it was still offering a range of add-ons for data, many of which didn't have 4G.

For the same money, you could get slightly more non-4G data - and there are cheaper daily add-ons. Certainly more than the website would suggest.

If Vodafone has got rid of the non-4G options then great, but I can't see the cheaper options either. But I wonder if I'm looking in the right place, as my SIM is data only.

Ah I don't know about data SIMs, I believe it is the same.

All phone plans include 4G for free though.

Not sure if this helps, but all the Vodafone free sims I've ordered won't connect to 4G until you top up. The only way I got it to go on 4G without a top up is to force the phone to 4G ONLY. Kind of weird.

I noticed that too when I ordered one of their Big bundle 50GB sims, no 4G, and it took a few hours after I'd topped up to connect to 4G too!

Again, previously my SIM without a running add-on would be rejected from 4G. Add a suitable data add-on and at some point (and it can take a while and require many reboots) you're allowed on. For me, forcing to 4G didn't work. It tries to connect and drops.

I found it a PITA as on a day when I was going into London to do 4G testing, I had to wait nearly two hours after activating a data add-on before I got 4G. That was last July and I didn't have quite the same problem later in the year.

It seemed unnecessarily complicated from Vodafone's point of view. Sell data and let people use 2G, 3G or 4G. Who cares?

I like the fact that 3 and EE let me at least test coverage without having to top up.

I'm not convinced that Vodafone has improved in my area, but I am not prepared to pay simply to check what the coverage is like, before paying to test performance. They've continued to lose me as a customer because of this.

I'm not sure about streaming compression, I haven't been on O2 for a while.

I've heard GiffGaff can be really slow as O2 throttle them, but you should be able to test the coverage with your sim fine. Tesco also run on O2 but I've heard they're throttled less than GiffGaff. I'd recommend going directly on O2 rather than one of their MVNO's if you can so your data isn't throttled.

You can still connect to 3G though.

You don't need to use any of your allowance to use Vodafone's own speed test app (which, IME usually reports a slower speed than using Ookla's app!) but you do need to have at least some data.

And, I just logged into my PAYG account and the following top-ups are available. As I thought, there are still some non-4G plans (but not many - last time I am sure there were duplicates for the 1GB and above plans that didn't have 4G).

All the following plans are considered 'iPad plans'. Perhaps there are different plans for mobile broadband, even though I can't see how there's any actual difference.

£3 - 200MB/24 hours/no 4G
£5 - 250MB/30 days/4G
£10 1GB/30 days/4G
£20 3GB/30 days/4G
£8 100MB Europe/24 hours/no 4G
£25 100MB Rest of World/24 hours/No 4G
£15 2GB/30 days/4G
£25 6GB/30 days/4G

So, you could pay £5 and get 4G access, then go to town on speed tests using the Net Perform app.

It is IMO silly that until you add a 4G data add-on, you're not allowed to connect to 4G. Obviously that's how they stop you using 4G - but it must result in people thinking 'no point paying for 4G, as there's no 4G around here'.

Yeah, but that doesn't tell me much about 4G.

I think everywhere that's got O2 4G has Vodafone 4G pretty much so you could get an O2 sim to test that.

That's pretty good that Vodafone have that app, I guess it's the rootmetrics equivalent for Vodafone. I'll probably order a free sim and get that app near the end of my contract or just when I want to compare networks in my area lol. And when I first sort of got into mobile networks and stuff and ordered a free sim from everyone, I genuinely thought I only had 4G on EE and O2, cause Vodafone wouldn't connect to 4G.

I can see a lot of people thinking that. Seems silly to restrict 4G now, and self defeating for Vodafone.

I have a feeling O2 is the same, you have to have paid for 4G data to be allowed onto 4G

Well here's something I never thought I'd type:

I've just had 95.4 Mbit/s down on Voda 4G on Band 7 sat in a cafe in Woolwich. 3 bars of signal showing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6g6u4shkb...%2002.png?dl=0

i am voderfone i am vary happy and how much usage have in my voderfone app on i phone 6 happy days

Giffgaff is rock bottom priority on the O2 network, so although you should have the same amount of coverage, don't expect fast speeds.

Put the sim in a phone and check which HLR you are using by dialling *#101# and press send.

From what I gather from someone who knows about Vodafone, the old platform has the letters 'hlr' in the first bit so you'll get something like lhlra, lhlrb, lhlrc etc. If you're still on this it won't use 4G and you'll need to ask support to sort it. I think it should change you automatically when you move to an eligible tariff.

The new format won't have the letters 'hlr' and the first bit could be different every time you query it. What do you get?

My almost new PAYG SIM has lhlra1 and no 4G too.