Vodafone Australia apologizes for network problems
Vodafone Australia has issued a public apology to its increasingly irate customers over the quality of the network over the past few months. There has been a spate of complaints about network outages, dropped calls and network congestion – culminating in an attempt by a legal firm to sign up enough customers to launch a class-action lawsuit against the company.
According to Vodafone CEO, Nigel Dews, their aim is to provide their customers with an excellent customer experience and the best possible value, but recently their network and customer service performance, particularly in December and January, fell well below the standards they have set for them. He was truly sorry and apologised both personally and on behalf of everyone at Vodafone.
The company blamed the problems on growing its customer base faster than it upgraded its network to cope. The company also didn’t hire enough staff to deal with the increased customer base, an issue it expects to resolve by hiring 300 extra customer care staff.
The company has outlined plans for a major network overhaul, including the construction or upgrade of some 2,500 base stations over the next twelve months and a reported replacement of its entire Radio Access Network with Huawei supplied kit.
The company expects to spend around $1 billion on the network upgrades which will also include a provision for HSPA+ services.
Bridgewater launches a-Blogging
‘Mobile Gets Personal’, this is the name of a blog which has been launched by the Bridgewater Systems.
This system will be offering news, opinions and analysis of breaking trends from the Bridgewater team. It will also cover industry events as Mobile World Congress and CTIA; information and analysis on key trends such as mobile network congestion, data offload and the end of flat-rate pricing; guest posts from service providers, partners and analysts; and regular interviews with leading industry insiders.
Cingular Wireless Responds to Earthquake in Hawaii
HONOLULU, Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ — Cingular Wireless said today that it has restored service to 98 percent of its cell sites in Hawaii following the earthquake there on Sunday and expects the remaining sites to be operational shortly. All Cingular stores in the state are open for business and serving customers.
Cingular conducts ongoing readiness drills throughout the year and has a rigorous emergency preparedness and response process in place for events like this earthquake.
“Our primary goal is to fully restore service as quickly as possible,” said Tammi Terrell, vice president and general manager for Cingular in Hawaii. “When a natural disaster occurs, our dedicated network team works around the clock to ensure that happens.”
In addition to delivering back-up generators and batteries to cell sites where needed, Cingular is deploying a COW (cellular on wheels), a portable wireless facility, to the Big Island of Hawaii where a cell site was damaged by the earthquake.
Cingular offers consumers these tips to help stay in touch during an emergency:
- Try text messaging, or SMS (Short Messaging Service). Most wireless
phones today are text-messaging capable, and often times during an
emergency situation such as an earthquake, text messages will go
through more quickly than voice calls. More importantly, using text
messaging helps free up the voice lines for emergency officials.
– Keep non-emergency calls to a minimum. Keep lines open for emergency
personnel. Remember to limit your calls to the most important ones.
Chances are, many people will be attempting to place wireless calls to
loved ones, friends and business associates. If the landline phones are
not working, this probability increases.
– Wait 10 seconds before redialing a call. On many wireless phones, to
redial a number, you simply push “send” after you’ve ended a call to
redial the previous number. If you do this too quickly, the data from
the phone to the cell sites does not have enough time to clear before
you’ve resent the same data and may contribute to network congestion.
– Use your wireless phone to access news information. Many homes lose
power during earthquakes and severe weather. If you have a wireless
phone that provides access to the Internet, you can watch or read the
latest news at your favorite news link or keep track of the weather on
the Weather Channel through Cingular’s MEdiaNet service.
– If you have a camera phone, take, store and send photos of damaged
property to your insurance company from your wireless device.
– Use a landline phone if it is available. In many instances, landline
service may still be available in your area so this still may be an
option.
Source- http://biz.yahoo.com
