[Ben]

Continues to lead the way in developing its radio network.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/news/2009/08/27/Vodafone-Rolls-Out-14-4Mbit-Mobile-Broadband/p1

...

Today Vodafone has announced it is rolling out 14.4Mbit mobile broadband nationwide making it the first UK telco to do so. Unsurprisingly, major city centres will benefit first with London, Birmingham and Liverpool first on the list. This actually makes sense given it is as much the density of users to any one cell tower as the signal strength of the tower itself which affects 3G performance.
As for the practicalities, happily Vodafone reports "over 80%" of all its datacards/dongles and 3G handsets can take advantage of the new speeds. How come the number is so high? Simple: given that real world speeds for 7.2Mbit are nowhere near this 14.4Mbit is unlikely to breach the 7.2Mbit barrier in everyday usage either - it should just make for a quicker, more reliable service due to the extra bandwidth. Huzzah!

...

[miffed]

They may have some kind of "quality over quantity" appeal , but be it 1.8 , 3.6 , 7.2 or 14.4mb - it doesn't make a blind bit of difference if you never see a 3G signal !!
After a brief trip to the Isle of wight las week , my experiences (en route and there) suggest that Vodafone don't actually have a 3G network at all , and a few enthusiasts must have Femtocels in their houses or something !

It's like we have two ends of the scale here - at one end we have 3 with excellent coverage , that doesn't perform very well , and at the other end we have Vodafones premium product , which performs well , but with coverage like rocking horse poo !

[3g-g]

I don't know if it's their legacy of operating at 900MHz, but at home, which is a suburb of Glasgow, both Vodafone and O2s 3G offerings are woeful.

Orange beam in HSDPA, as do T-Mo and 3... my Vodafone HSPA dongle sees 2G GPRS and that's it, and at that, when I do get a bit more mobile the 3G coverage is never quite "all there"... I do wonder if they've tried to set their 3G network up more like the 2G one, which on both Voda and O2s case, is faultless.

As miffed says, 14.4 HSDPA is great, if it's there to use.

[miffed]

Here would be a cool project (IMO) - with all these HTC Magis Vodafone have sold , I'd like to see someone produce an app which logs signal availability & geographical position throughout the day. and logs this info with a central point to provide a TRUE coverage map , none of this network PR rubbish !

Suppose the same could be done with the iPhone / o2 too !

[Ben]

Sounds like I'm one of the few people that seems to get bathed in rather a lot of Vodafone HSPA =P

[3GScottishUser]

I don't know if it's their legacy of operating at 900MHz, but at home, which is a suburb of Glasgow, both Vodafone and O2s 3G offerings are woeful.

Orange beam in HSDPA, as do T-Mo and 3... my Vodafone HSPA dongle sees 2G GPRS and that's it, and at that, when I do get a bit more mobile the 3G coverage is never quite "all there"... I do wonder if they've tried to set their 3G network up more like the 2G one, which on both Voda and O2s case, is faultless.

As miffed says, 14.4 HSDPA is great, if it's there to use.

Its not in Glasgow yet - I checked. Q4 2009 for city centre.

[Hands0n]

Vodafone is great at my home - but then the nearest 3G mast is .... oh, lets see now .... 150m away from my front door :D But I've never seen 7.2Mbps out of it, at best its peaked around 4Mbps.

These faster speeds are all well and good but two things strike me ...
1) Vodafone's data tariffs are usually very uncompetitive with the competition.
2) Their network coverage can be flaky as one travels around - even in E1 I barely have a 3G signal on my HTC Magic.

But that said - its generally a good reliable network. Some quirkiness in places, but generally good.