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Source: ONE News -
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Thousands of frustrated Kiwi gamers are demanding answers from
one of our biggest internet providers.
Vodafone customers have had a fortnight of delays, causing
widespread disruption for people playing internet games online in
real time.
There are now several websites with thousands of angry posts, with many users saying they will be changing internet providers.
The problem gamers have is latency, which means the lag time between clicking the mouse and seeing some action.
In online gaming, that can be the difference between life and death for the gamers' characters - and ultimately a fall in stature.
World of Warcraft gamer Robin Halligan told ONE News about the frustration.
"It's taken us a couple of years to get characters to the level we have, but at night time, when the lag is bad, you can't play the game at all.
"We belong to guilds and book games ahead, but the weekend turns up and you can't do it. It looks bad for your friends online.
"First Vodafone said it wasn't their fault. Then they said they were working on it. But that's all we ever hear."
The lag problem began two weeks ago and Vodafone doesn't know when it will be completely fixed. There is no official information about the problem on the Vodafone website, only on the forum.
Vodafone Corporate Communications spokesman Paul Brislen says it is an ongoing battle.
"It's something you have to keep doing and we are looking at making some major changes in the months ahead to try and put this to bed once and for all."
Brislen says the company fully appreciates gamers' frustration.
"It's not ideal, it's not the service they want and we want to give them the best service we can."
Are Vodafone's problems unique? Have you had recent problems with your internet speeds on any network? Have your say on our message board below
Add a Comment:
Post new commentFlashheart said on 2010-08-23 @ 13:33 NZDT: Report abusive post
I shifted to VDF from Orcon after assurances from staff that their RED max-speed deal was as good or better as the service from Orcon. I'm 400 m from the Mt Albert exchange. My latency with Orcon was 5 ms. With Vodafone its 529 ms. My download rate with Orcon was 18 MB/s. With Vodafone its 11 MB/s. Seriously - this is false advertising. I'm exceedingly unhappy.
jma said on 2010-08-15 @ 17:03 NZDT: Report abusive post
This has been a long time coming to Vodafone. Yes ihug were very good. Vodafone internet has been steadily declining and the press has been negligent in not picking it up, but instead bashed Telecom over XT which was a teething problem now fixed. Vodafone braodband has been getting very sluggish, and not good after school gets out and in the evening. Email is commonly down, and webmail more so, and reporting of problems on their network status page is incomplete as to the real down time.