Vodafone Internet and content shambles

Rating: where is the F1 content?

by Bena Roberts

Being without a brand new mobile device is a pain. But I do have an old Motorola (don’t know the name as it’s rubbed off the device –but it’s a fat, first ever black 3G device). I haven’t used my Vodafone SIM for a while now –but since my T-Mobile, 3 and O2 SIMS are lost – I had no choice but to top up the phone with GBP 50 and head over to Germany with it. I had two missions. The first was to test the mobile Internet out of the UK and the second was to stay true to Formula 1 and hopefully get or read the best ever content after the race in Canada on Sunday.

There are rumours that the browser used by Vodafone is the Novarra browser. I am not sure that I believe this as the content rendering was awful. I have tested Novarra’s services several times first hand and on 3 but the user experience was not the same. Even surfing on to www.gomonews.com was disaster and I couldn’t physically view any of the right handside of menu. In fact even our .mobi site didn’t look quite right.
Is this because I was out of the UK or using an old device? I have read the Vodafone press release on the new Internet several times and there is not mention that this should make a difference –so am not sure what is going on. (Trying to get an interview with both Vodafone and Novarra this week…)

Then after watching F1 and crying when Lewis Hamilton won (it’s the mother in me) I went immediately on to Vodafone live! to try and get some instant content, alerts or an update. Guess what. Nothing.
Now what a waste. At that particular time I would have watched, purchased or signed-up for anything Lewis Hamilton related but the Mobile TV didn’t work and the content was old. Now what on earth is that about?
Then I noticed that ITV content (ITV has rights to broadcast F1) wasn’t even on Vodafone? Duh? Come on Vodafone after nearly ten years of offering content services from SMS to everything else you can do better than this can’t you?

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