Commented on similar threads previously…
Had this for the lest few years – anecdotally, word seems to be that Vodafone have milked their network for long enough and customers’ 3G experiences have been poor. I don’t know the technicalities of this kind of stuff, but it seemed they dropped from having one of the best 3G networks to having one of the poorest over a period of four or five years. I couldn’t believe how bad a 3G signal I was getting, even in towns. However, in the countryside (where my work takes me quite a bit), where I’d most often desperately need Google maps to navigate me around, I never had any more than GPRS – which is rubbish with today’s smartphones. Every app one uses needs decent 3G signal, and not being able to send emails, upload photos to shared work streams or use a maps app was a PITA.
I went over to Three on all-you-can-masturbate-to data, loadsa minutes and teenager quantity of texts. Their coverage has been very good. I’ve been able to listen to internet radio on TuneIn in the middle of nowhere and download speeds have been very good.
Having said that, when 3G drops, you have nothing. Whereas with Vodafone, you could nearly always make a call if you had to on GPRS. Thankfully, this is pretty rare.
Someone mentioned on here that when he’d left Vodafone for the reasons above, the customer services person couldn’t be bothered putting him through to retention. I didn’t believe that until I did the same thing saying “To be honest, I know it’s not personally your fault, but your 3G coverage is rubbish and I can’t really use a smartphone on your network anymore.” She just said fair enough, gave me my PAC and said cheerio.