So for the past four months I’ve been having an intermittent fault with my Vodafone mobile data connection. Every so often (as frequently as a couple of times a day sometimes) I’ll find that while I’m able to resolve DNS names, ssh out, ping Internet hosts and pull down my mail via imap, I can’t retrieve webpages by http. When this happens, it generally lasts at least half an hour or so before coming right all by itself.

Making the HTTP request by hand shows that there’s some unhappiness between their transparent proxy and the Internet. The 504 response takes about two minutes to appear after making the request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: stranglethorn.linux.gen.nz

HTTP/1.1 504 Gateway Time-out
Server: WebProxy/3.1.1
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:29:01 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive

I get the problem both with my Huawei E618 data card using Vodafone’s Mobile Connect software and with my E60 and Nokia PC Suite. It’s also persisted through both a Windows reinstall and later a laptop replacement.

So after this had been going on for a month or so, and it seemed it wasn’t going to come right on its own, I logged a fault on Vodafone’s customer service webpage. A week later, a customer service rep phoned me to ask if the issue was still happening. I confirmed that it was, so he closed my support ticket. So started several months of phone calls in which I was asked to upgrade my Vodafone Mobile Connect software, reinstall Windows, reproduce the problem on a different cell site and all manner of other completely unrelated diagnostic tests. Eventually the guys on the regular helpdesk ran out of ideas and agreed to bounce me up to the mobile data tech support guys. Why they couldn’t have done this in the first place, I will never know.

Unfortunately the mobile data technical support team proved to be even less helpful than the lower rung on the helpdesk ladder – pretty much all they would tell me was that there were no known problems on their network. The idea that I might just be the first person who was persistent enough to battle through two months of the level 1 helpdesk zombie army didn’t hold much weight with them. Additionally, every time I dealt with the mobile data tech support group I needed to explain my issue from the start as they appeared to consistently fail to record the fact that I had spoken to them on my account, despite their assurances that not creating a record on the account simply wasn’t possible.

In the most recent call today I was told that there was no more they were able to do to help me, as they weren’t getting regular reports of similar issues from other customers. The guy I spoke to refused to escalate my call any further, asserting that the problem must be with my hardware, not with their network. My insistence that the problem occurs on my new laptop using Nokia PC Suite didn’t get me anywhere, because they don’t support using a phone as a modem. That’s right – Vodafone, a mobile phone provider, will not give you technical assistance for faults with their network if you’re using a phone as a modem on your PC.

Right now I’m just waiting for the rest of the two year term on my data connection to run out so I can switch to Telecom. Congratulations Vodafone, at the start of this year I was a loyal (since 2000) customer; now I just can’t wait to escape.