It seems kind of odd that Vodafone – a company that spent so much time trying to convince customers to ditch the landline – has confirmed it will be offering trial fixed broadband trials at first release mainland NBN sites. Would you sign up with Vodafone for the NBN?
VHA CEO Nigel Dews today announced that the telco would be contacting customers within the trial areas to offer the service on a free trial, alongside the 12 other retailers.
Because it’s still in the free trial stage, there’s no word about how Vodafone’s planning on pricing the offering when the NBN goes live, but it would make sense for them to offer bundles for mobile customers as well.
[via ZDNet]
hammo
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 2:20 PMNo. In more ways that there are atoms on the earth.
It would be more reliable to call the person you want to email and shout zeros and ones out for them to type in.
Ben Evans
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 2:37 PMWell if you are building a service that probably wont work, best to choose partners who are incapable of delivering a quality service too. B players relate to other b players after all.
Corteks
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 3:05 PMConsidering their mobile network’s performance it seems like signing up for this would be a very VERY bad idea :/
Who knows, maybe it’ll end up being fantastic, but if it is I’ll be pretty epically shocked.
Sylphier
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 3:06 PMAlthough my area is most likely not in the trial sites… but it’ll greatly depend on whether this ‘cellular hardware upgrade’ can restore my confidence towards VHA. If I see a significant effort and improvement in the mobile sector then I ‘might’ consider their landline.
matt
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 3:12 PMthats because a home phone is pretty much an expensive redundant piece of equipment when you all have mobiles… and everyone having mobiles is very convenient and practical.
whereas the NBN can do things that mobile can not. great things!
Gazman
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 3:38 PMWill it be more reliable than their mobile service?
Thats the real question…
Greg
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 3:51 PM“Our mobile network has failed, so let’s try this whole fibre fixed line thing”.
At least without control of the infrastructure, it will be more difficult for them to cripple it.
Temujin E Morgan
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 6:14 PMThis is VHA. They will be the only company capable of screwing fibre.
Simon Reidy
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 4:24 PMI wouldn’t touch Vodafone’s mobile service, but fibre is fibre, so as a retailer of the NBN I’d happily use them if the price, speed and data allowance was right.
I suspect when the NBN hits my area that I’ll have the choice of going with a real ISP like Internode, but I can see big companies like Vodafone doing very well from the NBN, and there would be no harm in participating in their trial.
Rob H
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 6:15 PMJust a note that Vodafone NZ does currently sell fixed line services in NZ (ADSL2+ ULL based) – so this is not completely out of the blue for Voda…
John
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 7:08 PMBe nice if they could spend more money getting their wireless service fixed!
Ano C. Pangalan
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 7:14 PMAre you joking? Is this question for real? I have a Vody mobile contract. I have to go OUTSIDE to use my ‘phone. 4klms from the CBD. in a capital city….and i can’t make a call from inside my home. Why in all that’s printable would i trust them as an ISP as well? Nah, i’ll stick with the Company that has given me great service and unlimited data for years, thanks all the same. Vodaphone?….HAH….!
Aus
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 8:57 PMExpect a speed of 1 kbit/s
Steve
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 9:49 PMVodafone wouldn’t know how to hold a chook raffle…. steer clear.
David
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 10:06 PMheh heh…if anyone were seriously considering signing up to Vodafone…just ring one of their phone numbers and ask some questions or test their support. Useless doesn’t really come that close to describing it. And if you find that bad…just for fun….call their Corporate Sales and ask for something that is a little “out of the box” and see how quick they tell you go go to someone else. Voda may be huge in Europe but here…going backwards fast for many years.
Peter C.
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:45 AMClearly you have not used Telstra customer service, I have and they are often cr*p. Telstra beats them all with even at times just plain rude and ignorant operators, on more than occasion agressively argumentative whilst being condescending! And my dad has Optus, used to sign their praises (“you should be on Optus instead they are brilliant”) but now he’s had multiple bad experiences.
Also have you spoken to any who has TPG Internet?
Alan
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 11:39 PMIf it runs like the Vodafone mobile network I am currently using in the Melbourne CBD, would do better with a piece of string and two rusty cans. No way Vodafail. Need to get off this mobile broadband (huh !! ) network and get something that works period!. Never again Vodafone !
Steve
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 11:57 PMTo be fair, Vodafone’s problem is due to their crappy 3G infrastructure. The NBN is a government project, meaning there is 0 correlation between one and the other.
Greg
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 12:54 PMClearly you do not understand the parallels of the two.
Very different end-user technologies, sure, but you still need a network engineering clue to do either well.
RobbyM
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 3:59 PMI wonder.
If you ring up Vodafail to sign up for this, whether you’d actually manage to get through and talk to someone in less than 1 hour or without them hanging up on you or promising to call you back due to a high volume of calls but never hearing from them again?
Either way, I’d refuse to deal with them. If they don’t care about the existing customers of their mobile products, why would they care about the suckers who sign up for their internet service?