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Johannesburg - Vodacom spokesperson Richard Spoor told Fin24 that the company's free data campaign on Sunday had been a major success, with more than eight million people participating.
He said: "We set a new network record with throughput peaking at 29 Gigabits per second, 20% higher than anything we’d seen before.
"Data traffic was as much as 150% higher than normal in high-demand areas."
He was commenting after all Vodacom customers received 1 GB data free of charge until 23:59 on 11 May to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary.
While some users were happy, Fin24 was inundated with complaints from users who said they could hardly send messages, let alone browse the internet from Vodacom's network.
Fin24 in the meantime received a new batch of complaints.
Francois Marais wrote:"I saw your story on the 1 gig data only today (on Monday), but I want to tell you that Vodacom was unable to provide me with any decent data connection yesterday (on Sunday) and the same to other people that I know. My brother and I did separate speed tests in different parts of SA and he got a maximum of 0.3 mbps, but I received a lousy 0.1 mbps with a s4 and a HDPSA connection. People might think what Vodacom did was nice, but in actual fact the gift disrupted normal operations.
S Lloyd was another irritated customer: "I didn’t get the free data – I was looking forward to getting it and was extremely disappointed when I didn’t get it. I did try to contact Vodacom via email and stated that it was really sad to promise something and then not to deliver. I also said that my contract was due for updating and I was already considering going to a different supplier as I had a problem with my handset which was handled extremely poorly (I had to take it back about eight times before it was repaired). This was very disappointing after being with Vodacom for so many years and it has helped me with my decision not to renew my contract.
Nkosana Mbokane wrote the following: "The data was extremely, extremely slow. Could not download anything from sites from which I generally download music. I could not even read the news on news24. So the offer was absolutely useless. I suggest next time they offer half price for data instead of a useless and unusable data offer.
Estelle Visser was also disgusted and wrote: "I could not use my 1 Gig from Vodacom on Sunday because there was just no signal as of Saturday morning. So thanks for nothing Vodacom!!!!!
Another fin24 user, B du Toit said: "The free Gb that you (Vodacom) gave me on Mothers' Day was of no use to me whatsoever. I could not use it as there was no network for the entire day! Please explain why this was and if this is going to happen again in future."
He said: "We set a new network record with throughput peaking at 29 Gigabits per second, 20% higher than anything we’d seen before.
"Data traffic was as much as 150% higher than normal in high-demand areas."
He was commenting after all Vodacom customers received 1 GB data free of charge until 23:59 on 11 May to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary.
While some users were happy, Fin24 was inundated with complaints from users who said they could hardly send messages, let alone browse the internet from Vodacom's network.
Fin24 in the meantime received a new batch of complaints.
Francois Marais wrote:"I saw your story on the 1 gig data only today (on Monday), but I want to tell you that Vodacom was unable to provide me with any decent data connection yesterday (on Sunday) and the same to other people that I know. My brother and I did separate speed tests in different parts of SA and he got a maximum of 0.3 mbps, but I received a lousy 0.1 mbps with a s4 and a HDPSA connection. People might think what Vodacom did was nice, but in actual fact the gift disrupted normal operations.
S Lloyd was another irritated customer: "I didn’t get the free data – I was looking forward to getting it and was extremely disappointed when I didn’t get it. I did try to contact Vodacom via email and stated that it was really sad to promise something and then not to deliver. I also said that my contract was due for updating and I was already considering going to a different supplier as I had a problem with my handset which was handled extremely poorly (I had to take it back about eight times before it was repaired). This was very disappointing after being with Vodacom for so many years and it has helped me with my decision not to renew my contract.
Nkosana Mbokane wrote the following: "The data was extremely, extremely slow. Could not download anything from sites from which I generally download music. I could not even read the news on news24. So the offer was absolutely useless. I suggest next time they offer half price for data instead of a useless and unusable data offer.
Estelle Visser was also disgusted and wrote: "I could not use my 1 Gig from Vodacom on Sunday because there was just no signal as of Saturday morning. So thanks for nothing Vodacom!!!!!
Another fin24 user, B du Toit said: "The free Gb that you (Vodacom) gave me on Mothers' Day was of no use to me whatsoever. I could not use it as there was no network for the entire day! Please explain why this was and if this is going to happen again in future."
