While I saw Vodafoneās Super Wifi commercials, I never thought to act on them, since (mistakenly) I thought it was something to do with cellphones. Might have been the gadgets they used in the commercial.
But, after talking to Raghu, their salesā rep in Pune, a city outside of Mumbai that I know well, he convinced me to upgrade not just my cellular plan (which was from 2012 when a gig of data were a lot) but the home internet to Super Wifi.
This is really a laypersonās post as there isnāt much online about it, at least not from a New Zealand perspective.
The set-up consists of the Vodafone Ultra Hub (a modem that I was already familiar with, since I had mine since 2018), and two TP-Link Deco X20 units, which are for all-home wifi. The idea is that they transmit the wifi signal over the house. Theyāre equipped for wifi 6, which really just tells you the speedāand not 6G was I was told on the phone (a minor slip).
I knew about mesh wifi units since a friend had already told me how she and her partner used them in their home.
Weāre in a 290 mĀ² home so I had a suspicion that the two units would be insufficient, but Vodafoneās protocol is to begin with two.
The Ultra Hub is identical to the old oneāthe copyright notice on the box says 2017āso Iāll be returning it. The two Deco units plug in, one to the Ultra Hub, the other in another part of the house. The theory is that they communicate between each other.
I downloaded the TP-Link app first before plugging in the Deco unitsāin fact I had them the day beforeāand I was fortunate that it could be found at a public APK site, since I do not have Google, and, God willing, never will, on any cellphone of mine.
Itās a remarkably easy to use app, fortunately, with a Speedtest built in.
Iāve always had problems at one end of the house where I have a desktop PC thatās not wifi-enabled, and putting in a PCI-E adapter wouldnāt work due to space restrictions inside the case. My only option to pick up wifi would be a USB 3 adapter, which coincidentally was also made by TP-Link (itās the Archer T9UH).
I disliked the D-Link Powerlink units, which, despite the manufacturerās claims, lost 90 per cent of their speed between the two points. The signal at the modem end would come in at speeds of between 700 and 1,000 Mbit/s, but 40 to 90 Mbit/s at the other end was commonplace. The 1 Gbyte promised by all the marketing was a fantasy.
The previous owner of this house also used Powerlink units, but at different points.
Computer geeks still tell me these are good and I suspect they could work well in smaller homes or ones with newer wiring.
For context, using the old Saturn fibre cable that I had installed in 1999 at the old house, I would easily see over 300 Mbit/s via a cat 5 ethernet cable. Having to live with speeds between a ninth and a third of that in a house with Chorus fibre was tough going, and life proved too busy to get an extra internal cable installed.
I was glad to see the tail end of those powerline units as I was promised that 600 Mbit/s was going to be possible at the end of the house with the mesh.
It wasnāt. In fact, the second unit failed to pick up the first, and I was forced to bring it closer to the first in another room.
Speedtestās first result was 106 Mbit/s down and 58 Mbit/s up, which was an improvement, but not a good one, and far short of the promised levels.
The TP-Link app had a Speedtest result of over 916 Mbit/s no matter where I went. I didnāt realize that it was giving me the results at the point of entry on the first Deco unit.
Therefore, it should show a higher number. When I realized this, I began running Speedtests via speedtest.net, and was disappointed to see, even at the first unit via wifi, results in the 120 Mbit/s region.
I called tech support. The first person didnāt know much, but I explained that Raghu had promised two additional mesh units should my experience not be up to expectation. She said she was only authorized to send one. I decided to take it. She was also authorized to give me unlimited phone data for seven days in case I needed to use the cell as a hotspot.
I called again later and got to speak with a tech, Paul, who had the units at his home, and could tell me more.
First, the X20s have two LAN ports on the back. I had read somewhere that these were for the modem-to-unit link exclusively. It turns out that was wrong. You can plug in an ethernet cable and run it straight into your computerārendering my purchase of the TP-Link Archer adapter redundant. Secondly, I should employ a wifi test if I really wanted to see what was going on: I should plug in a device via ethernet into the Deco unit.
The results were then markedly different: between 600 and 700 Mbit/s from the first unit, but still low numbers with the second.
The third unit arrived and this helped somewhat, with 300-plus Mbit/s in a ground floor room when connected via ethernet.
In the meantime, I had got back in touch with Raghu and suggested that a fourth unit might do the trick, and get me at least back to the speeds I had in the late 2010s. Interestingly, he was only authorized to send two, which meant I would be in possession of five such units, all of which I had to pay the courier charges for.
Units four and five arrived. The fourth unit went into the upstairs office and I had a 3 m ethernet cable running from it, on the floor, to the PC. The speeds were still poor: 178 Mbit/s down, 175 Mbit/s up.
One thing TP-Linkās app does not tell you, at least not in diagrammatic form, is how the Deco units are all connected. I discovered through the web interface (tplinkdeco.net in a browser, using the password that you signed up to the app with) that the office one was stretching to get its signal from the first oneāand not the other two in the house. This Reddit page told me what I needed to know: you reboot the unit that you want reconnecting elsewhere. I did that, and it found the third unit in the ādenā (as we call it) and speeds went up to between 200 and 270 Mbit/s both down and up.
Iām still dealing with speeds lower than what I had in 2018 using a 1999 cable but getting into the 200s is a far sight better than being in the double digits. If I have any serious downloading to do, thereās always the option of the laptop and a direct connection from the Ultra Hub, where I can work away at 700ā900 Mbit/s.
Iāll continue to tinker since the laptop managed to get over 300 Mbit/s during the tests, and I believe that that was down to the location of the office Deco unit. However, Iām hampered by the 3 m ethernet cable and Iām going to need 5 m, possibly (no one sells a 4 m). Possibly going to a cat 7 cable might do the trick there, too.
So there you have it, a real-world trial of Vodafone New Zealandās Super Wifi. Not as great as promised but less of a let-down than what powerline modems do in real life. And yes, you can hook ethernet cables from the units to your computer.
This Pukerua Bay Tardis was the last thing I shot before the cellphone’s camera and gallery failed
First world problems: the cellphone. Right now my partner and I have half a phone each, so between us, we have one phone. She can receive calls on hers but no one can hear her answer. Mine no longer rings but you can hear me speak. So I guess the way to communicate with us, while there are no repairers within easy reach during Level 3, is to call her, we note down the number, and one of us calls you back on my phone. Oh, and neither of us can take photos any more: hers has had an issue with SD cards from quite early on, and mine developed an inability to function as a camera last week.
Iām not that bothered, really. Iāve no real desire to get a new one and while itās a shame to lose a very good camera, one wonders whether I should just get a camera. After all, those last longer than a mere 18 months ā¦
The fault on my Meizu M6 Note isnāt easily explained. Iāve spotted similar errors online, solved by deleting the app cache or app data. That doesnāt work for me. The camera crashes on opening, as does the downloadsā folder. The gallery is a grey, translucent screen that does or doesnāt crash eventually. The stock music and video apps cannot find anything, though the stock file manager and ES File Explorer tell me that everything is there, and the music and video files play.
Iāve not lost any important dataāIāve always backed up regularlyāand Iāve transferred everything off the SD card, including all SMSs and contacts, as well as photos.
PB (who sold my phone) says this is a software issue (avoiding a warranty claim) but Iām sensing that the phone is crapping out whenever itās trying to write to one of its disks. That sounds like hardware to me. I can transfer files via ES File Explorer but it crashes immediately after the transfer. It doesnāt appear to be the SD card, as when I unmount it, it makes no difference.
Meizu has been useless: no forum answers and no customer-service answers, though I did contact them during the CCP Workersā Day holiday and mainland China was, it appears, shut.
Iād go back to my old phone but the only way to charge it is to drive to Johnsonville and ask the repair shop to charge itāthatās been the only way since they repaired the screen last year. They claim they havenāt altered the charging mechanism, but since no charger in this house works, not even a new one, I canāt explain why this is. The techs there are mum because it would be giving away a trade secret, I suspect. It seems I need a special charger since the manufacturerās one is no longer compatible, and, guess what? I bet you the repairer will sell me one at some ridiculous price.
But for now it is rather inconvenient, making me wonder: just why on earth do we need a cellphone anyway, when we have perfectly adequate land lines, when they become this much of a nuisance? They are frightfully expensive for little, fragile trinkets that I now increasingly use for just calling and not apps. There is no utility to a phone that can only be charged at one location, and there is no utility to the newer phone to which no one has posted a ready solution.
Last night, I reset the newer unit to factory settings, and, happily, none of the Google BS returned. Maybe it was software. I still canāt do any updating with Meizuās official patches, which is annoying. But for that brief, glorious period, I could take photos again. The camera, gallery and downloadsā folder would open.
I did have to find, with some difficulty, the Chinese version of the Meizu app store, since I never saved the APK separately. This at least allowed me to get some of the Chinese apps not available on Meizuās western app store. It was a shame to see some of the apps I once had no longer in the catalogue; presumably, the licence had expired.
And there I was, for about five or six hours reconfiguring everything, and Iām now suspecting that I should not have put the thing into developer mode or downloaded Whatsapp. Those were the last things I did, content that all was well, before waking up this morning to find myself back to square one, with the bugs all returned. The log files tell me nothing other than Meizuās servers not responding properly (theyāve been getting progressively worse supporting people outside China).
I never wanted Whatsapp but for one friend formerly in Germany, and one of Dadās friends in Hong Kong. The former has moved back here and can be reached on Facebook, accessible via a basic browser. And sadly, I doubt I will hear much from the latter now that Dad has passed away. He knows my regular number anyway, and if I had a cellphone that rings, maybe he could call it.
Since Whatsapp and Instagram are owned by Facebook, it would not surprise me if both were becoming less and less compatible with Android v. 7, and Iāve charted Instagramās increasing, Facebook-era faults on this blog before. If Facebook canāt get its basics right on its flagship site, then why should I have their crap in my pocket?
Generally, I could live without it. Maybe tomorrow night Iāll give the reset another go. Iāve saved most of the APKs from this round, and it was a good opportunity to do without some apps that I seldom used. But I already lost a day to it earlier in the week, a night to it last night, and I face the prospect of more hours to come. These things are not productive when they take up this much time. And I donāt like typing on tiny keyboards, I do absolutely zero work on them other than calls since it is impossible to compose a logical email (which you then have to somehow sync back to the desktop to maintain a full, professional record, wasting even more time), and they serve only a narrow range of purposes, photography being one. Iām still quicker looking at a paper map than relying on a device.
However, I donāt like faulty gadgets that have cost me hundreds of dollars, and since a reset solved the problems for a few hours, it might be worth one more shot to at least bring things closer to normal, useful or not. Letās at least have that camera and music back.
For reasons unknown to me, May seems to be a quiet month for my blogging. I looked back to 2010 and usually, this is the month I blog less. Maybe itās the change in seasons, or I find other things to occupy my time.
This year, itās been far more eventful, as on the 10th inst., we moved. Thirty-six years at the same address, and Iām now in the northern suburbs of Wellington. The postal code has changed from a 6 to a 5 at the beginning, which gives you an idea of just how far north we went.
As a middle-aged man I donāt need to be that close to town any more, and since Iāve always worked from home, all I really need is a stable and reliable internet connection. We need space for team members who work for me on-site, which we now have far more of. The internet connection is the one thing that really needs work in terms of my daily routine, since we are on multiple levels, and D-Linkās Powerline āmains modemsā have not been that good here, while Vodafoneās Ultrahub also loses too much in terms of bandwidth in different parts of the property.
Above: There’s too great a loss of bandwidth through the D-link Powerline units. The top screen shot is a device plugged into the Vodafone Ultrahub near the Chorus ONT.
Itās goodbye Evans Bay views (which have never been the same since the Indoor Sport Stadium was erected at great additional unnecessary expense to ratepayers; a clear reminder not to trust certain establishment politicians) and hello to rolling hills and native bush.
It hasnāt all sunk in yet, as Iāve been working while the move has taken place, and havenāt had the time to enjoy the process. Rationally, I know we made the right decision, otherwise weād never have done it, but other than the last half-hour at the old place, letting the memories of each room flood in as I walked through for the last time, I havenāt been particularly emotional. In fact, when the buyers of my old home signed, I was actually happier for them than I was for myself, since they had been searching for a while, and I felt they got a good deal. Here they were, third time lucky in this street, and getting the largest house on the largest section, and, with the greatest respect to my former neighbours, a more solid one, too. (Yes, Iāve knocked on your timber inside over the years.) They have a view which they never would have had in the other places.
They additionally have a connection to a former resident on the street, which I wonāt go into publicly; and one partyās father actually came from the street we moved into. Also in one of those āvery New Zealandā coincidences, one dear friend who helped me move headed to Åtaki that evening, and told a woman there that he had been helping us. It turns out that she was the sister of one half of the couple that previously owned our new home. These seem to be very āharmoniousā events that appeal to my heritage, the sort of signs that to others might signal that āitās all meant to beā if you were seeking something beyond the rational.
In one year, in a street of 14 homes, four properties have changed hands; if you count the place on the corner of the street (which technically isnāt part of it), itās five properties. If anyone were to write its history (not that anyone would), 2018ā19 was the period of a sea change in terms of the people there.
Weāre still living among boxes, and there are still two storage unitsā worth of stuff that we need to empty out, but weāll just have to take things one step at a time. We filled a skip full of old stuff, and probably could have filled a second, once you added the miscellaneous trips our friends and I made to the tip. But on this end there are still a few things that need to go.
For the last two years, the Mary Potter Hospice has been the principal beneficiary of the nicer items, which included new things that my parents and grandmother acquired but never used.
One remarkable thing is how well the old furniture fits with the new place, and, interestingly, how comparatively poorly it fitted with the old. Itās as though my family bought for this house. When you look back over four decades, you get a sense of how things do intersect and come together, if youāre lucky, and we certainly regard ourselves as very lucky indeed. It makes me happy that things have worked out on many fronts, save for my Dadās Alzheimerās disease. Perhaps for him, too, there is a silver lining: we have wound up closer to him, so a drive north only takes 16 minutes (on a good day) rather than close to an hour.
Yesterday, we visited the old street to collect the last bits and pieces out of the garage, and said hi to one of our former neighbours. Weāll visit others we didnāt have a chance to farewell, since the move out took longer than planned, and we had to dash off to get to the new place that day. That neighbour had been there for 60 years, and had seen everything from one couple having an argument where the woman chased the man with a shotgun round the grounds of Rongotai College, to the residents that had come and gone over the years. Interestingly, she didnāt remember a case of arson (to an old Humber car) in the 1980s, to which the fire brigade was called; but other tales remained as clear as day.
I wonāt go into the nitty-gritty as there are many tales to tell, and Kiwi motorway behaviour is pitiful in so many cases as we drive up north. And for privacy reasons, I wonāt blog too much just yet about how weāre finding the new place, as weāre still adjusting to it ourselves. I will say the former owners were meticulous, filling up and painting over walls where things were once mounted (unless they used those 3M strips), and we are ever so grateful to them.
Itās marketing 101ā[Vodafone New Zealand] seem to breach the rules quite regularly and youād have to hope that these signiļ¬cant ļ¬nes are a signal to them that they canāt continue to do that.
And it is the principle: because since 2006, I have not been a Vodafone customer. And since 2009, one of my companies has not been a Vodafone customer. In fact, since March 2009, I have no ties with Vodafone whatsoever, either personally or as a director of a company that uses Vodafone.
On the same invoice is an ‘Opening balance from last statement’ for $4Ā·21, which they debited from my credit card on February 25, 2011. But that time, I received no invoiceāthey just went ahead and did it.
When I called Vodafone, I was told that the charges were made on a calling card that was still valid. Problem: I have never had a calling card with Vodafone.
And now, today, they revealed that they took $24 in 2010.
But as Vodafone is guilty of 21 breaches of consumer law in a July case aloneāand was found guilty of misleading customers over Vodafone Live and its $1 a day services the year beforeāyou can summarize that something is very rotten there.
I’d swore I’d never go backānek minnit, they’ve acquired TelstraClear. Oligopoly much?
At Vodafone’s request via Twitter, I have emailed them the following. It does contain the usual pleasantries at the beginning and the end, omitted here for brevity. This summarizes the entire case so far.
This is further to SS’s request on Twitter that I send you these details. I will note that two customer services’ officers on the call care centre have also been investigating. Attached you’ll find a bill that I was sent via email on September 7. You’ll see it’s for 22Ā¢, and that in April 2011, another $4 was debited from my credit card. A phone call to Vodafone today revealed that over $20 was taken in 2010. The problem with all of this is that I have not been a Vodafone customer since March 2009. If you want to split hairs, I actually haven’t been one since 2006, I believe, but one of my companies was between 2006 and 2009. Here’s what I recall.
ā¢ Became an Ihug customer in 1998, but left Ihug for Saturn in 2000. I kept some toll calls with Ihug but switched back to TelstraClear some time during that decade. Your records show the account was closed in 2006āalthough I was also told a contradictory statement that the account was not closed. ā¢ Lucire Ltd. was a Vodafone customer on a three-year contract between March 2006 and March 2009. I am a director of that company.
Here’s what I understand from Vodafone (gleaned from conversations on September 8, 9 [I think] and 29).
ā¢ In 2010, Vodafone debited over $20 (I believe $24) from my credit card. In 2011, it debited $4. In 2012, I get a bill for 22Ā¢. (Note: I’ve never received a bill from you since I left except for the 22Ā¢ charge.) ā¢ I have been told various things. On September 8ā9, I was told that the 2011 and 2012 charges were due to a calling card. (Note: I have never had a Vodafone calling card.) ā¢ Today I was told that the charges were due to toll calls. (Note: TelstraClear has handled all my toll calls since 2006, if not before.)
I was promised a refund of the $4 in one of the early September phone calls. My credit card statement shows no such refund. I have confirmed that the credit card details you hold are correct. Worryingly, they are also currentāwhich they cannot be if I left you in 2009 and my credit card originally expired that year. I also began receiving spam from you this week for a cellphone number that was with you, but has not been with you since 2009. Here’s what I don’t get if I was still a customer:
ā¢ I don’t hear from you guys for three years. All of a sudden I start getting spam from you; ā¢ I’ve never received a single invoice from you for the money you’ve takenāat least not till September 7, 2012.
So I’m pretty sure you know that I’m not a customer of yours. Now, I’m willing to take my share of the blame. I should be reading every line of my credit card statement. But, I’d also like you guys to refund what you’ve charged since I ceased being a customer.
There’s also the buggy Air New Zealand site where they shifted the blame to me for not clearing the cookies or understanding how the back end of their website works, but I’ll leave that for another day. What they didn’t figure was my taking screen shots of what I did.
PS. (October 15): Vodafone has just emailed me asking that my credit card details be updated. So much for ‘We have made sure your account is cancelled.’ But since they updated them unilaterally in 2009, I imagine they will just do it again. Air New Zealand, meanwhile, sorted out its bug and apologized, so there will be no post about that.āJY
P.PS. (October 15): I’ve been on the phone with Vodafone. Now I’m told that in June 2009, I was charged $116Ā·30; in July 2009, $43Ā·43; in August 2009, $63Ā·51. All for toll calls. All while not being a Vodafone customer. The amounts appear to have been debited from my credit card each time. No invoice was ever received this end though Vodafone claims that they sent them to me via email. This is dodgy already since I have never opted for emailed invoices, and that they had always come in the post prior. Lucire Ltd. was a Vodafone cellphone customer till, I recall, March 2009, and up till then, I had invoices mailed to me. I was an Ihug customer (allegedly till 2006) and also had invoices mailed. So why the change? I still find this very, very hard to believeāit’s as though Vodafone cheekily took money knowing that I was not a customer and is using email as an excuseājust as it originally claimed that I had a ‘calling card’ and that that was the reason I received my 22Ā¢ bill.āJY
P.P.PS. (October 15): TelstraClear says I have been with them for tolls since May 6, 2008, which is later than I thought, and also later than the 2006 date Vodafone gave in the last September phone call. It doesn’t change the core argument though, but it does give us a precise date on which to start any inquiry.āJY
P.P.P.PS. (October 16): Chris from Vodafone calls and can find charges almost every month from May 2009, a few in 2010, and one in 2011. He’s promised to get them refunded. It really sounds like I’ve paid for tolls twice. He’s as puzzled as I am why I have never been posted bills since that was how Vodafone always did it while I was a customer till March 2009. Apparently the 2011 refund was never done.āJY
P.P.P.P.PS. (October 27): No sign of any refunds on my credit card statement.āJY
Above I’d mention the war, but Honda was founded after the surrender.
I despise fax-spam, and under my reading of the Telecommunications Act, these come under nuisance calls. But regardless of the legality, it seems rather hypocritical for Honda to have sent me one for its Insight hybrid car.
Think about it: a lot of people who have a fax line use paper faxes. The Insight is meant to be eco-friendly, and the fax ad even says so. So what is eco-friendly about using people’s paper and film or toner?
It runs counter to what the car is supposed to stand for. And if it is educated people who opt for these hybrid cars, then they will be able to see the mixed message in this marketing technique.
Typographically, it doesn’t follow Honda’s other advertising.
This had pissed me off for me to Tweet about it, and be nasty toward Hondaāwhich has typically been one of the few brands I steered my Corolla-wanting friends to. I have a feeling the effect of the campaign has led to more negativity about Honda than its other marketing channels.
Way to go, Honda, for steering even more people to the Toyota Prius.
In 2008, I also wrote about text spam, and Vodafone was guilty of sending me at least one promotional message after it promised (in writing) that it would not. When confronted about it, the company clammed up. It was, I believe, the last message I ever sent to them, and I was delighted to end our contract with them.
Seems Vodafone isn’t the only party doing this, post-Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007. Hamish McConnochie has stayed on Telecom for doing it to him last year, and I agree with his reading that this is a breach of s. 11.
It’s clear text spam falls under the Act, and neither Hamish nor I had ever consented to receive such messages.
Telecom has some agreements around but he was not ever shown the one that covered his XT upgrade. As if the XT name wasn’t tarnished enough already.
Hamish will be going on Back Benches (TVNZ 7, 9 p.m.) this Wednesday night, and I’m looking forward to seeing this issue get wider coverage.
