The call quality is generally OK although sometimes you hear some sort of a mild echo in the background. Video calls are average, there is a slight lag between motion and voice and the video isn't smooth with lots of frame skipping. For fun it is great but it needs to improve a lot to be used for business reasons.
As a new network, I can understand that they have teething problems but I've experienced a lot of dropouts that can't be explained. Here is a list of issues that I've experienced. (please drop me a line at comments@3GinOz.com if you want to share some of your experiences with the service. Click here for comments submitted by other users of the network)
- Call drops even though the signal strength is maximum
- Call gets diverted to voice mail
despite the signal strength being at maximum
- Call is received, you can hear the other side but they can't hear you
- The
signal strength goes from max to min continuously
- Despite having a roaming agreement with Vodafone, the phone doesn't switch to
2G despite no 3G signal
- The inability to make phone calls despite having a maximum signal strength
I've done the right thing and reported most if not all of the above to the Customer service line. (See Customer Service section)
I've been told by a "3" support person that if you switch from a 3G zone to a 2G zone, the call will drop and that they are working on fixing this with Vodafone.
On Friday the 25th of July, the network had a major outage where no calls could be made or received for over 4.5 hours from around 6 PM onwards. This is a major concern and highlights a single point of failure within the network which indicates either a bad design or some cutting corners. In any case, Hutchison should provide some explanation to its customers on what happened and how are they going to ensure it won't happen again. The Customer Care staff have informed me that Hutchison will provide and explanation in the papers, if they do, I'll post or provide a link here.
By late September 2003, the call quality has improved significantly over what is has been over the first few months. There are far less call dropouts and those who try to contact me are not complaining so much about getting busy tones, etc...
Checkout "Ex-staff blast 3 service" Article from the Australian on the 9th of December