MOBILE phone service providers Digicel and Vodafone yesterday clarified customer concerns on the various networks available for their respective service users.
Some mobile phone users on outer islands had raised concerns about the non-availability of access to 3G and 4G networks.
Digicel Fiji public relations and sponsorship manager Satish Narain said 4G was only available in Suva, Nadi and Lautoka for Digicel while the rest of the country, including islands, were on 3G+.
Mr Narain said given the geography, the hills, etc, there may be drop-outs in signals in some parts of any island.
“For example if you walk to the end of the road you would get very strong 3G+ signal and it might drop on the other end.”
Mr Narain said smartphones and other handsets had in-built sensors and would pick up the available signal in the area so there’s no use to switch to a different network manually.
“We have received complaints from customers in relation to not being able to receive signal at all and this was termed because of problems at transmitters otherwise most of our customers enjoy fast internet access and have hardly posted complaints via our customer care or Facebook page. In fact the islands get very fast internet access with Digicel,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vodafone head of mCommerce and Corporate Affairs Shailendra Prasad said Vodafone’s 3G network covered about 95 per cent and 4G about 65 per cent of Fiji’s population.
Mr Prasad said it was important to note the network coverage was population coverage as opposed to geographic coverage.
