Vodafone blames 3G data issues on soft upgrade

Vodafone Australia has blamed a "software fault" for weeks of data browsing issues on its 3G network.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that "instability" introduced by an update had prevented Vodafone from scaling up capacity on its network in line with demand.

A spokesman for the telco told the Whirlpool broadband forum that the telco had "uncovered a fault that is affecting data throughput on our network.

"We're now working to correct the fault and we expect to have more stable software installed on the network before the end of November," the spokesman said.

"Once the new software is installed, we'll be putting extra capacity into the network to better support 3G data usage."

Similar messages were being posted to the telco's @VodafoneAU_help twitter feed, promising a fix in "two weeks".

Vodafone claimed in a separate statement to iTnews that only "a small percentage of customers" were affected, to whom the carrier apologised.

The statements came after more than a month of reports from frustrated users on Whirlpool of slow download and upload speeds and poor signal coverage.

A spokesman for Vodafone denied that the mobile operator was suffering any network issues last week.