Monday, May 22, 2006

Vodafone's 3G coverage sucks

I was very excited when I received my Vodafone Mobile Connect Card last year. I'd finally be able to get more work done on the train and I'd be able to stay in touch with work when working at remote locations.

Sadly, the reality has been somewhat less successful. 3G coverage at my current client location is almost non existent and I can't even get GPRS at the hotel.

As for when I commute between London and Winchester (to get to Hursley), forget it. I'm lucky if my card can maintain a connection for more than a few seconds.

At least losing a connection doesn't cause my machine to blue-screen (like the GPRS card did) but it's still unacceptable. Come on Vodafone... sort it out!

Does anybody know if any of the other providers are any better?

[Posted from a South West Train somewhere near Clapham Junction.... hopefully]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah, but are you using WECM? the frequent dropouts along the London-Winchester line are made more bearable by a VPN client that features reconnection and a persistent IP.

Richard Brown said...

Ahhh!

How do I get WECM?

Anonymous said...

Orange seems to be better but I have not tested it myself.

We are trying to roll out citrix using vodafone 3G cards and it is becoming more and more obvious it isn't going to happen as the lag on GPRS is so bad its almost unusable, direct connection via a modem is more stable and faster?!?!

Richard Brown said...

I don't find the latency on 3G too bad but I agree that dialup is probably better in that regard.

Interestingly, I've always found GPRS to be much slower than dialup... perhaps it was the latency that caught me out there.