Vodafone - yay or nay?

[Lissa]

Is there any reason why moving to Vodafone would be a bad idea? I'm fed up of O2 not letting me have even a tiny chance of getting an iPhone 4 unless I phone their stores and check their website every day (and the website is always out of date). Vodafone has a much more sensible policy - order it now, they'll send it when they can.

Are Vodafone ok? Or at least as good as O2?

[Awesome Wells]

I've been a Vodaphoner for about a year, having been an Oranger for the previous eight. I was a BT Cellnet person for a year or so before that, but that's as close to O2 as I've ever come, I'm afraid. As for the McLaren sponsors themselves, I think they're pretty good - I've never had a problem with signal (except, occasionally, on trains to London - but I notice from a recent collumn that you've had the same and I suspect it may be a more general train-ish thing) and they do nice deals for people if you ask them. Whether they're as good as O2's deals, I dunno. But it's a cautious yet still enthusiastic thumbs up from me, nonetheless. I don't think - think - moving to them will be a bad idea.

[Darren]

I moved to Vodafone because Orange (my long term provider) were incapable of giving me a signal in my own home.

Thus far, no real complaints.


Vodafone have a very good forum with helpful people.

[SiHart]

I've always been on Vodafone and they've always been good to me.

Si xx

[Captain Tancredi]

I've never had a problem with signal (except, occasionally, on trains to London - but I notice from a recent collumn that you've had the same and I suspect it may be a more general train-ish thing)

Believe it or not, it's the tinting on train windows which messes with the signal.

[Awesome Wells]

Believe it or not, it's the tinting on train windows which messes with the signal.

Really? That's a TOP FACT.

[duncan]

We were on Virgin PAYG and they were rubbish! As soon as we went inside any kind of public building such as our local supermarket, we lost all reception and their customer service is one of the worst I have experienced (Thomson Holidays is by far the worst).

We switched to Vodaphone and had no trouble at all with reception although we did find as PAYG users that didn't use their phones very much, the calls were expensive. Then we found out that ASDA Mobile use the Vodaphone network and we switched to them getting really cheap calls and excellent customer service!

[Rob McCow]

They're all the same, these sinister corporations.

Mind you, if they gave me 30 free texts a month they could do what they like!

[Si Hunt]

Believe it or not, it's the tinting on train windows which messes with the signal.

Why, then, does my signal get lost each day but only between Cheshunt and Tottenham Hale?

Si.

[Stuart Wallis]

It's The Lads trying to wind you up. They're all the same, these sinister corporations...*



*-Cheshunt not being that far from where I am, funnily. If you see any eight-foot bovver-boys on the railway disguised as railway workers, wave back, it might be them!

[SiHart]

Maybe Cheshunt is a big black spot on the face of the planet.

Si xx

[Captain Tancredi]

I should probably have added that the problem relates mostly to express trains built in the last ten years or so. The reason is that the tinting is done with a very thin film which has a high metallic content, so the carriage becomes what's known as a Faraday cage- which other people are more qualified to explain...

On another note, Phones4u in Leeds were advertising that they had 4 in stock this lunchtime.

[Darren]

Maybe it's a blessing Lissa. The iPhone apparantly has a serious design flaw. Apple are holding a press conference soon.

[Rob McCow]

I watched a documentary about Vodafone today, how they were once a company called Racal and how they beat BT to creating a nationwide, reliable network even though BT was a massively larger company. The Vodafone engineers wrote a computer program so they could map the coverage, which gave them the advantage rather than trying to spam everywhere.

Now Vodafone are the big evil company and no-one gets good service.

[Stuart Wallis]

Maybe Cheshunt is a big black spot on the face of the planet.

Now now! Paul Monk nearly lived there, so it's almost decent!

As for Ian's Faraday cage, what one of those is, I gather, is generally for drawing off electrical charge; so the power for the trains goes straight into motive thrust rather than us when we lean on the windows, doors etc. There is the side-effect that the cage disrupts radio signals, including mobile phone signals, so that's where the problem may lie.

[Jon Masters]

A faraday cage is any container which has boundaries made of a conductor, like a metal box or even a car. The boundaries don't have to be solid so long as you can trace a route from one point on the cage to any other point.

Electric fields can't affect anything inside a Faraday cage, so for example, it could be struck by lightning and anyone inside would be inaffected (Mr Hammond demonstrated this once on TG using massive Tessla coils).

However, mobile phone signals don't using flowing electrical charge but electromagnetic radiation like radiowaves and microwaves. And although these can be affected by metal structures (e.g. polarised microwaves can be blocked by a grid of parallel metal bars placed at just the right angle), they have nothing to do with Faraday cages.

Homework - pages 113, questions 1-5 by Monday please.

[Stuart Wallis]

Just so I know, does my explanation bear any resemblance to science at all?

[SiHart]

My rabbits ate my homework Mr Masters.

Si xx

[The Xnth Doctor]

Is there any reason why moving to Vodafone would be a bad idea? I'm fed up of O2 not letting me have even a tiny chance of getting an iPhone 4 unless I phone their stores and check their website every day (and the website is always out of date). Vodafone has a much more sensible policy - order it now, they'll send it when they can. Are Vodafone ok? Or at least as good as O2?

I would have to say NAY, but only because I have been on Orange since 2008and have not found any reason to complain about their service

[Anthony Williams]

I would say a massive NAY to Vodafone, as I left them a year ago... I found that their contracts had all sorts of hidden costs and weren't inclusive of VAT (which they never told me). I had a contract that was meant to be £30 a month. I never paid less than £45.

Also, I took out insurance for my phone. Which they decided to cancel without telling me after a year, despite being told when I took it out that they would deduct the payment yearly and it would continue.

Ugm.

Ant x