Vodafone giving customers free data this weekend, apologises for network issues

Tower
Vodafone would be hoping users aren't feeling a sense of déjà vu

Starting midnight tonight, June 20, to 3am Monday June 23, all Vodafone customers will have unlimited data access that won't count against their allowance.

Vodafone is hoping this "free weekend of data" will make up for network problems that had been affecting call, SMS and data service across the nation on Thursday, June 19.

"We know our customers had a less than perfect network experience today and we want them to know we're sorry," said Vodafone's Chief Technology Officer Benoit Hanssen in a statement sent out last night.

"Our team is proud of our network. 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."

Transparency

Before launching its 4G network and its new Red plans last year, Vodafone had been shedding customers by the droves due to network capacity problems across the nation from about 2010.

Former CEO Bill Morrow had admitted that Vodafone had dropped the ball, but it has since been working on gaining back customer trust.

Faced with network issues yesterday, the telco was quick to send out a statement yesterday to explain what had happened.

"At approximately 11.00am (AEST) services across Western Australia were impacted by a transmission network failure. As Hanssen's network team was restoring services at approximately 1.00pm (AEST), problems occurred which had an impact on the network nationally. Some customers experienced issues with call, SMS and data services," Vodafone explained.

Services were restored nationally by 4.10pm (AEST) yesterday, though data services weren't restored in Western Australia until 6.30pm (AEST). Vodafone is currently investigating the cause of the network failure.

"Our only priority today was restoring full network services to all customers as soon as possible." Hanssen said.

"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."