One Wellington company is so unhappy with Vodafone's 3G Mobile Connect data services it's moving to Telecom's T3G network instead.

Food and Commodity Brokers planned to use data services over Vodafone's network to operate a mobile office, connecting a Wellington-based server to travelling salesmen. It was recommended the company move from GPRS to 3G because Vodafone was offering a free upgrade to existing GPRS customers provided they were on a 24-month 50Mb data plan.

The 3G cards were installed and tested but when the laptops were moved to the Wellington office, the signal quality was poor. The card would connect in 3G mode, then default back to GPRS or alternate between the two, meaning the applications using the 3G link would fail or report errors.

Observatory Crest, which installed the software, contacted Vodafone and asked for an external antenna. It was told to go to a Vodafone WOW store in Wellington.

Staff at the WOW store told Paul Grover of Observatory Crest he was running an old version of the software (though the website said New Zealand should be using version 4.02) and he was given version 5.02. However, when the staff at WOW tested the external antenna, they did not see any improvement in signal quality. They advised that to stop the 3G card from alternating between the 3G signal and GPRS, the card should be set to 3G only.