Afrihost APN - no LTE problem

[Web Telecom Services]

So this morning I again had issues using LTE when connected to the Afrihost APN, as did a work colleague and my housemate.
I realised the problem this morning when my housemate was complaining his LTE is not working on Afrihost, so I advised that mine is connected to LTE on Afrihost and its working fine.

Then I started testig ... so what I did then is turn on airplane mode for a minute and turned airplane mode off. The LTE symbol appeared again but then there was no internet access. My phone was not receiving an IP address.

I changed the APN back to mymtn and immediately got an IP address when on LTE. I changed back to Afrihost and was not getting an IP address.

This only seems to happen in the morning and it is not area-dependant.

So my thought is this, and im keen to find out what everybody else thinks. In the morning a lot of people turn on their ipads and phones etc so there are lots of requests for connections to the Afrihost APN, so could one of the following be the issue:
1) Afrihost is unable to handle the amount of connection / authentication requests in the morning
2) MTN is only allowing a certain amount of simultaneous connections to Afrihost APN on LTE
3) MTN needs to allocate a larger IP range to Afrihost

Any three of those are a strong possibility but there could be something else wrong.

I tweeted Afrihost this morning and they reply saying "Please complete the MTN coverage form here". Its not coverage related because why would mymtn work on LTE? Something else is wrong and either Afrihost is not aware of it or they know about the root cause and are still trying to resolve it (but not telling its users)?

 

[whatwhat]

Yeah I've turned off LTE on my iPhone in Durban as the Afrihost LTE stops working quite regularly now. The MTN works fine, and before Afriman asks me again, yes, I am provisioned on Afrihost for LTE.

 

[nodski]

Do you know what sim you're using? I experience the same problems, but only with Micro sims, the Nano and standard sims work fine?

 

[Web Telecom Services]

Do you know what sim you're using? I experience the same problems, but only with Micro sims, the Nano and standard sims work fine?

Im using a nano sim on iPhone 5S .... oh and YES I have had LTE provisioned three times already (before I get asked)

 

[cavedog]

No nano LTE sims too.... Its working now but was not working yesterday afternoon.. It comes and goes but the mymtn and internet apn ALWAYS works on LTE. When I email they always just reply with plz fill in the coverage form or ask if I have a LTE enabled sim or if LTE has been provisioned...

 

[nodski]

I don't think this is a Afrihost problem. It seems to me that Vodacom has a issue with Nano sims that has the Iphone.APN provision.
As soon as you add a custom APN you have problems.

 

[Web Telecom Services]

I don't think this is a Afrihost problem. It seems to me that Vodacom has a issue with Nano sims that has the Iphone.APN provision.
As soon as you add a custom APN you have problems.

Has anybody experienced this Afrihost LTE issue on an iPad? Unfotunately Afrihost sent me 64K sims last week so I havent been able to test LTE on an iPad yet ...

 

[w1tw0lf]

I have the huawei e3276 lte modem in a 3g/4g pepwave surf on the go router. Woke up this morning and struggled with slow connection. Checked the settings and signal and was in 3g, rebooted and jusy wont connect. Plug in to laptop and same issue, didnt even get signal. Eventually got signal an connected, but slow. Micro sim from afrihost and lte provisioned.

 

[whatwhat]

I don't think this is a Afrihost problem. It seems to me that Vodacom has a issue with Nano sims that has the Iphone.APN provision.
As soon as you add a custom APN you have problems.

Don't be silly. In one location the Afrihost LTE APN doesn't work, the MTN LTE works. It's an Afrihost problem.

 

[Web Telecom Services]

Don't be silly. In one location the Afrihost LTE APN doesn't work, the MTN LTE works. It's an Afrihost problem.

It clearly is an Afrihost problem and they are denying it - requesting coverage forms to be filled in and copy and paste replies such as "have you been provisioned for LTE".

I was on chat with Chris N last week Friday and when I explained the LTE problem to him he acknowledged that he too experienced the problem and thought it was his phone. I also received a few emails from support over the weekend saying there were "issues" with MTN which were resolved. Clearly not!

My bet is on MTN limiting the amount of concurrent LTE sessions allowed on the Afrihost APN - but its just a thumb suck guess.

 

[Azimuth]

Has anybody experienced this Afrihost LTE issue on an iPad? Unfotunately Afrihost sent me 64K sims last week so I havent been able to test LTE on an iPad yet ...

iPad works fine and *all* the time. Cellular voice just doesn't work properly with LTE yet.

 

[cavedog]

iPad works fine and *all* the time. Cellular voice just doesn't work properly with LTE yet.

Still does not explain why the mymtn apn will ALWAYS work flawlessly but afrihost apn gives these problems...

 

[Web Telecom Services]

That is my question as well and nobody at Afrihost will admit there is a problem. Its too easy to say has LTE been enabled or please complete coverage form. They dont seem to read messages saying LTE works fine on the MTN APN but not on the Afrihost APN.

 

[Azimuth]

I personally haven't used the mymtn APN for LTE due to OOB. I used it briefly but it chewed up all my airtime. So I cannot vouch.

Have you guys used it for long durations and not sporadic use (between Afrihost?).

 

[cavedog]

I personally haven't used the mymtn APN for LTE due to OOB. I used it briefly but it chewed up all my airtime. So I cannot vouch.

Have you guys used it for long durations and not sporadic use (between Afrihost?).

Yes I have and still got 3.82GB data on MTN which cost me R490 cause if their stupid website that timed out and I reloaded the page and they added 2x 2GB bundles and refuse to fix it, but atleast LTE works flawlessly on mymtn and internet apn.

 

[AfriMan]

I'm running LTE on my iPad using our APN, definitely working as it should. I see some posters here have also reported in other threads that they have LTE service now as well

 

[Web Telecom Services]

I'm running LTE on my iPad using our APN, definitely working as it should. I see some posters here have also reported in other threads that they have LTE service now as well

Still doesnt explain the outages on LTE when using Afrihost APN, but when switching back to mymtn LTE works flawlessly. Its not linked to coverage. Chris N. on your helpdesk had the exact same issue on Friday ...

 

[AfriMan]

Still doesnt explain the outages on LTE when using Afrihost APN, but when switching back to mymtn LTE works flawlessly. Its not linked to coverage. Chris N. on your helpdesk had the exact same issue on Friday ...

Friday was a different issue. All SIMS use the APN, whether you have another carrier or not. Our APN is our "channel" that runs on the MTN network. Even our data only SIMS run on the same APN.

 

[Web Telecom Services]

Friday was a different issue. All SIMS use the APN, whether you have another carrier or not. Our APN is our "channel" that runs on the MTN network. Even our data only SIMS run on the same APN.

But the problem occurred yesterday morning as well.

If you were connected to LTE it worked, but if you put phone on airplane mode or rebooted and tried connecting to LTE again it wouldnt connect. Changing to mymtn you were able to connect to LTE.

So as I asked yesterday, is there some kind of limit imposed by MTN to only allow a certain amount of LTE connections to their network?

 

[whatwhat]

Friday was a different issue. All SIMS use the APN, whether you have another carrier or not. Our APN is our "channel" that runs on the MTN network. Even our data only SIMS run on the same APN.

That's good, but what would cause me not being able to use the Afrihost APN at random times and swopping over to MTN APN works fine? It only started recently, before I was on LTE without issues on Afrihost.