If you were a Vodafone customer in Australia this week, there’s a very good chance you were angry on Thursday, and if you were, it likely had something to do with the network being down, but hey, there’s some good news, too.
This week, Vodafone had a problem: its network went down in patches across the country.
Starting at 11am Sydney time (AEST), the Vodafone network began to fall apart in Western Australia, a fault that Vodafone attributes to a “transmission network failure.”
People took to social networking to complain, and then one by one more customers were affected, with customers from all over the nation gradually dealing with problems on the Vodafone network.
Not all, mind you, but some, and enough for Vodafone and its customers to be concerned by.
The national problems began when Vodafone’s team began to fix the problems in WA, with dropouts occurring across the country across SMS, data, and even the phone networks.
Thankfully, service was restored by 4.10pm for most Vodafone customers, with Western Australian access restored by 6.30pm.
“We know our customers had a less than perfect network experience today and we want them to know we’re sorry,” said Benoit Hanssen, Chief Technology Officer at Vodafone on Thursday evening.
“Our only priority today was restoring full network services to all customers as soon as possible. We’re now investigating to find out the root cause of the problem. While no mobile network in the world can guarantee it will never experience occasional issues, we’re working to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
To make up for this problem, Vodafone will be giving its customers a treat this weekend, with free data all weekend.
Yup, you read that right: free data all weekend for Vodafone customers, with no data charges applied from Friday (today) to 3am (Sydney time, AEST) on Monday, June 23, 2014.
“Our team is proud of our network,” said Hanssen, adding “that’s why we want to say sorry by giving them what we know they value the most – data – so they are free to surf, tweet, post, stream, download, click and play without limits.”
We’re a little curious what the acceptable use policy for this one will be, and have contacted Vodafone to find out where it will draw the line, since the claim of “unlimited data access all weekend” — which Hanssen has said in a quote: “to apologise we want them to enjoy unlimited data access all weekend” — could surely provide some interesting opportunities for its users, especially since it’s a form of apology for the company.
In any case, go nuts Vodafone customers, because Voda is picking up the bill this weekend.
UPDATE (4.30pm): …and Voda has confirmed it: there is no acceptable use policy for this weekend. Seriously, go nuts.
