Team-BHP - 4G connection quality of Airtel / Vodafone going down?

Here in Delhi-NCR, both Voda and Airtel are on a virtually downward spiral. Just last month, calls on my primary number (then with Voda) stopped connecting when I was at home all of a sudden and out of the blue. The drop in connectivity was so drastic that I had to call the Voda team to inspect, but even they couldn't decipher the exact reason for the sudden fall, and advised me to use WhatsApp calls in the interim.

I checked and found that Airtel worked better at my place (through a friend's airtel connection) and so switched to Airtel. Guess what- Airtel has no network coverage when I'm at work. I'm now unfortunately stuck with Airtel for 3 months (MNP lock in period I guess) while Voda followed up the other day claiming their network is now back to normal. In a mad race to give virtually everything for free, it is the network quality which has sadly taken the beating.

Dear Mods/Creator - Please add Ambani Ji's Jio too to the list.

Thanks for creating this thread. At least I can vent my frustration :Frustrati

I have an issue, I switched to Jio a couple of months back as the Airtel network at my office sucks. Every time I get a call, I had to go outside and talk. This is the situation at Hitec City, Hyderabad. After switching to Jio, I have to do the same at my Home lol:. I don't even get a signal to catch the calls. No, I don't want to use the dual sim. One number is enough for me. Still waiting for Any Ji from the Ambani's to solve this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fordday (Post 4657621)

Mods - I could not identify a relevant thread for this discussion. Request to move to appropriate thread if it exists.

Of late I am getting horrible internet speed in my airtel 4G mobile connection. It is frequently getting dropped and most of the time I see only one (up/down) arrow next to the 4G icon. I sometimes switch back to 3G which seems to get connected. Overall it has deteriorated.

My wife has Vodafone 4G and she started complaining about the same. It seems both airtel and vodafone seems affected. Are they upgrading their infrastructure? It seems too much of a coincidence that both will be doing it at the same time.

Is it that Jio has slowly strangled them both? Quarterly financial reports of both says they are bleeding cash.

This is in Bangalore. Are other cities facing it?

Thanks.

A Bangalore resident and immense sufferer of Vodafone horrible network and 4G speed. My wife has Airtel and she too has similar issues, thankfully for us it is always in different areas. At home, bellandur, both network are decent not great. But in most Brewerys and Restaurants Vodafone is pathetic and I usually borrow my wife's phone to use net. On the highways both are equally pathetic.

There were few days when at home Vodafone just went bust and I had to go to the terrace of my building to get range. Its become that bad.

Thanks for this thread.

I am from Bangalore. I was on Vodafone for about 14 years and recently couple of months back switch back to Airtel as Vodafone 4G was pathetic. My office is situated in a prime location in bangalore and still I wasn't getting any decent speed. Have registered many complaints with vodafone regarding same and they have a set of template questions to ask and post that nothing would change.

Switched over to Airtel, I realized that Airtel is same as Vodafone. Only change is I am getting used to this now. The speed was pathetic that even whatsapp messages will not get delivered (just text). I started finding hacks, tried finding location within office where I get some speed nothing helped. Finally found out that if I switch over to 3G my whatsapp messages are getting delivered, so I switch to 3G once I enter office.

Even other way as well outside office too, the connection is not anything great with Airtel.

There were times, we had good connection but we had a limit on data so we couldn't use it as freely as possible now we have loads of data but we don't have a way to spend that at all. So called Life!

Thanks for starting this much needed thread, Vodafone network around February-March was excellent in my area, I used to have my office work done through its network at that time. Then they started some 'integration' where they were keeping just Idea or Vodafone tower wherever they are overlapping. That has completely screwed the quality ever since.

There was no 4G connectivity during May to August Mid, calls would just not connect, my phone would constantly switch from 3G to 4G to roaming draining battery too fast, heck, I stopped getting quick OTP messages for my bank transactions for a few weeks, I called the customer service a couple of times and 'escalated' the issue (in their terms) but nothing helped. I've now switched to the lowest possible post paid option and got a Jio connection which works very well in my house. The situation has improved a little, but there is a lot of congestion even today, calls take a lot of time to connect, sometimes just drop while in conversation. The most frustrating part is my wife and I have a corporate offer where calls are free between the both of us, and for some strange reason, neither of us can call the other one, it just does not connect :Frustrati , we have to use Whatsapp calling. Considering we have a baby in the house, its very important to have good connectivity. I am going to wait for a few months, then port my number to Jio (currently getting opinions on Jio's coverage).

What I hate about Vodafone is the manner in which they have handled this integration. They did not even send a message before the integration started, its when situation started getting worse when they started giving some useless updates through SMS. In other countries, the courts would have asked them to give back the money of the services they failed to offer.

Network problems cropping up in a previously strong connection indicate issues with the concerned cellphone tower &/or the fibre lines leading to it. Unless that hardware is repaired, there's nothing really you can do. Solution for the consumer - have 2-3 operators' sim cards at home, there's a fair degree of certainly that atleast one will work all the time. With current mobile tariffs being dirt cheap, it's not a costly solution at all.

In Pune, Vodafone has been pathetic all the time and especially in the last couple of months, using a cellphone has been a frustrating experience. The calls get dropped randomly and when I am at home, no one is able to connect to any of my three vodafone numbers. I can make calls though :-(. If one succeeds to connect with me, the call quality is very poor and unreliable. We have to rely on Whatsapp calls or messaging. On the data side, 4G network is patchy. In most of the stores when I want to make payment using UPI or PAYTM, I am unable to connect. So I end up paying by credit card or Cash. On the move the maps stops showing the live traffic due to bad connection and even though the signal is shown as full strength, data doesn't work. Many times I have to restart my phone to register on the network.

I raised a complaint with Vodafone few times and I get standard answer that some work is going on and the problem will be resolved soon! Then there are suggestions to try putting the sim in a different sim slot, changing the phone and manually selecting network etc. etc. Nothing has worked so far.

I am seriously considering to switch to JIO, which seem to be better in my area.

I have been a customer of Airtel for a very long time, in Mumbai earlier and now in Bangalore. Needless to say, mobile phone signal has become pathetic since last 2-3 years. Added problem is Airtel signal is weak inside my home. Whenever I had called customer care, a techie from Ericsson would come home and do some measurements and tell me that it is "really bad" inside my apartment :Frustrati After a few days Airtel will revert saying they have done some realignment at the tower to improve the situation. Occasionally it had improved marginally and a few days later back to square one. Airtel has been honest with me stating that, they have to deploy a tower nearby and their challenge is they are not getting the space. I have the same issue with Vodafone signal too. As a backup, I have Jio and Vodafone too at home lol: Jio data speed is nothing to write home about.

Only reason I had not ported out of Airtel is, in the past Airtel has been fantastic. I had always received excellent service from them in the past. And Vodafone or Jio is not encouraging either.

I guess the fear created by activists on the ill-effects of Tower is one of the reason for lack of adequate number of towers. Of course, onslaught of Jio too has caused the incumbent players to bleed financially, forcing them to be cautious in making additional investments. Now 5G is on the anvil and need even bigger investment. With 5G on horizon, why would they invest now? Just imagine - incumbent players will have to keep their network in 2G to 4G now and 5G as well in near future.

I think, the blame should be squarely on the Government. For one thing - need a strong clarity by the government on 5G and coexistence of 2G onwards. Further, with several agencies like TRAI, DOT etc, why none has taken note of the situation on the quality of service? If they did, what did they do address this? As we all agree the problem has been since last 3 years or so and I don't see any reprieve anytime soon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fordday (Post 4657621)

I used to use Vodafone 4G for a while. It was terrible.
I switched to Airtel sometime back, that is equally terrible.

Airtel in Bangalore has really become useless, especially if you are in a busy part of the city. I guess the networks are getting chocked with all the traffic and is not able to support the bandwidth needs. For egs in Indira Nagar where I stay and in Brookfields where I work, during peak hours Airtel barely manages to sustain even basic internet connection requirements.

Funny thing is Jio network is not very far off in this aspect either lol.

Again all this is in crowded city, if you go to less crowded place or town both the networks works decently and will really surprise you. With the boom in smart phone usage, sadly our networks are nowhere near ready, to sustain the number needs is what I feel.

Its entirely dependent on area - number of subscribers and available bandwidth. According to my last 10 years experience (out of 15 years mobile use), Airtel wins hands down in Bangalore (Specially places I lived within South Bangalore). Where as when I used to go to Kolkata, felt Vodafone was better; but now a days I get better speed in Airtel than Vodafone in Kolkata (North, near Airport). In Bangalore, call quality and 4G speed (with VoLTE) is exceptional for Airtel in HSR to Electronic City anywhere I checked, but problematic for me in Koramangala. Jio is almost dead where I live.

So it all boils down to the area - with available infra/bandwidth for different providers. Port to one that gives better speed and voice clarity where you live and work. One thing to remember, a full signal icon in your mobile does not indicate bandwidth. So your signal may be full but bandwidth may be less because number of users hooked into the tower are more.