GPRS Data usage on *141#

[Deenem]

Anyone else have problem with the data usage calculations done on MTN GPRS?

On Saturday morning I bought a new prepaid SIM card and R30 airtime, I dial 555 and buy a 10Mb data bundle. Then I load a page on my PDA to make sure its working (www.pdaportal.com). A few hours later I dial *141# to get my balances and it tell me I only have 8.2Mb left. I only viewed one page, how could I use up 1.8Mb?

So they rest of the afternoon I'm keeping an eye score of the cricket test in England. Reloading a the livescorecard on the BBC website every half hour or so. After all this downloading I dial *141# again to check my balance again and now it says I've got 8.9 Mb left. It's given me data back. Next day I try again. I haven't loaded a single page in the mean time and my balance has gone to 7.9 Mb remaining.

Rest of Sunday, Monday and today I've been browing my usual amount and my balance is at 8.02Mb remaining.

My question is : How can we possible rely on MTN's billing system when it's so obviously innaccurate. Sure it's only ten bucks, but surely if they're c0cking it up so badly on the small amounts then they're probably making the same mistakes on the big values as well.

[ScrnScrm]

Hi Deenem
You sure you didnt have any other apps running in the background that could have used up the bandwidth? In my experience, the IP accounting is quite accurate on all 3 networks...
Cheers -

[BloemGuy]

In my experience, the IP accounting is quite accurate on all 3 networks...
Cheers -

Although I have found that actual usage is sometimes not shown on the correct dates ... i.e. after a day of heavy usage, the data will be listed a day or two later, but why that is I don't know and I haven't really worried about it.

[Deenem]

I'm using it in an iMate Jam (Very nice device BTW), so it's unlikely that there is anything running in the background.

Anyway, it doesn't explain how loading once web page 'used up' 1.8Mb of data, then later after quite a bit of use it went backward to only 1.2Mb used.

At the moment it just seems to be spewing out random numbers when I do a balance enquiry.

It only seems to happen with MTN Prepaid simcards. The Vodacom prepaid works fine. On the vodacom4me site yout can at least check your usage, I can't find the same thing on the MTN site.