Doubts posed over Sure Signal femtocell
22 April 2010
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Extract from Vodafonewatch, issue 2010.03. Click through for: the Executive Brief from this month’s report; the Issue Snapshot; or to contact us for more information about the full 80-page issue, this industry standard monthly report service, and ongoing subscription access.
Doubts posed over Sure Signal femtocell
Questions have been raised over the performance of Vodafone UK’s Sure Signal femtocell offering, which has recently been re-branded and marketed with renewed vigour after a previous soft-launch (Vodafonewatch, 2009.06, 2009.12, and 2010.01).
The Register reported that the £50-£150 (EUR56-EUR168) proposition, which is promoted by Vodafone as a lifeline for signal-poor consumers and businesses, has been offering a “far from sure” service, with customers left facing “repeated disconnections and slowdowns of the service, as Vodafone struggles to integrate its mobile phone network with the internet”.
Tallying with Vodafonewatch’s own experience with the devices, the website said its Sure Signal had been “playing up for the last day or two, and Vodafone’s forums are now awash with users complaining of intermittent connection failure”.
Problems appear numerous and often difficult to pin-down, and, when deemed appropriate, are seemingly escalated to Vodafone’s ‘Pioneer’ team and supporting vendor Alcatel Lucent. The actual femtocells are made by Sagem. Problems are exacerbated by handsets connected to the femtocell failing to seamlessly hand back to Vodafone’s wide area network when the Sure Signal fails. Users are also nonplussed by the minimal amount of status and troubleshooting information; just a series of cryptic flashing lights with no browser interface.
A Vodafone spokesperson conceded that “some” customers “will have noticed changes in their Sure Signal service for short periods of time over the last few days during planned maintenance upgrades”. Only a few days later, however, Vodafone UK sent out a press release trumpeting the device’s ability to help small- and medium-size enterprises “stay connected to their customers”.
Comment: Vodafone dicing with reputational risk
So far, users seem surprisingly phlegmatic about the problems, which is fortunate for Vodafone, since they are likely to be over¬¬ represented by choice customer segments that the OpCo is desperately fighting to retain and poach, such as iPhone, BlackBerry and other smartphone and heavy voice users.
The current situation points to flawed marketing, with the service promoted as providing a ‘guaranteed signal at home’ (a laughable concept, to affected users) and discounted for higher¬ spending customers. This also comes at a time when Vodafone is seeing an influx of new customers from other operators, lured by introduction of Sure Signal, the iPhone, and keen SIM only tariffs, i.e. customers it should be fighting hard to delight and retain. A further risk is that ‘femtocell’ becomes synonymous with ‘failure’.
Consequently, the company might be wise quickly to move into damage limitation mode, perhaps refunding customers suffering problems, and ring fencing the initiative as an opt in ‘beta’ programme until issues are convincingly ironed out, which conceivably might not be until the next version. This approach could actually engender goodwill, since users appear to understand that innovative new services can suffer teething problems, and to be genuinely appreciative to Vodafone for pioneering a solution that meets their crying need for improved mobile voice and data connectivity in rural and other poor¬ signal areas.
[Further reference: Sure Signal not so sure -- The Register, 24 March 2010; Vodafone Sure Signal ensures 3G coverage 24/7 for UK businesses -- Vodafone, 26 March 2010.]
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Issue: 2010.03
Covering: March 2010
Published: April 2010
Next issue: April 2010
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