A third cellular radio tower has gone up on farm land above Te Hutewai Rd. The tower sits alongside existing Vodafone and Spark towers on the same site. The towers provide mobile phone service around Raglan. The new tower has been put up by 2 Degrees who until now had to pay Vodafone when 2 Degrees customers used mobile phone service in Raglan. The 2 Degrees equipment was switched on at 4.30pm on Monday 22th September. The new medium height tower is hooked into the network by a radio link to the Chorus telecommunications exchange in Wainui Rd.
2 Degrees Communications Manager, Charlene White, said that “Customers will see big improvement with increased data speeds and improved coverage”. This seems unlikely as data speeds are determined by whether a phone handset is 2G, 3G or 4G and coverage is largely determined by tower height. While the 2 Degrees tower is slightly higher than the Vodafone one, it is much lower than the tall Spark tower. The best mobile coverage around Raglan is likley to continue to be provided by Spark. A real improvement to Raglan’s patchy mobile phone coverage will only come when the mobile phone companies set up cell sites at different locations.
Meanwhile, Vodafone customers have been without service in Raglan since Saturday 20th September.
Vodafone still say, ‘UNDER REPAIR’. Vodafone External Communication Manager told the Raglan Chronicle that a “major’ repair would be undertaken on the evening of 23rd . Nothing was fixed then and Vodafone still say:
Services Affected – 2G Voice and Data – UNDER REPAIR
Sat Sep 20 07:45:00 NZST 2014
While Vodafone say that only older format 2G phones are affected, Raglan Vodafone customers also report problems with 3G phones.
Update: Vodafone have just phoned me (11.45 Friday 26th). They will send out a tech on Saturday and should have the 2G issues fixed by the middle of the day. They have said they will look into the 3G issues.
Update: as at 8.00am on Saturday 27th September, Vodafone mobile service in Raglan is working again.