Afrihost Mobile Data disappearance

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elitper

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Posting here since the Afrihost support route is a dead end.

Had a notification on Sunday morning that my Afrihost mobile data is at 80%. Check in ClientZone, and see data is dropping fast. Phone is on wifi and has been charging, so no active usage. Report to Afrihost and turn off mobile data completely.

Naturally, a lot of back and forth with the Afrihost support email box over the last few days.

Eventually sent this last night

image.png
Screenshot at 2020-09-23 07-51-29.png

Allocation of 3GB of data for the month, consumption on Sunday ~9GB, which continued through Monday (another 400MB) even after being "capped". Last session also shows Sunday morning when I turned off mobile data completely.

The latest from Afrihost, quoted verbatim

"Kindly top up and download a bandwidth so we may ascertain whether there is any background activity on your device."

Does this seem logical to anyone else? The screenshots above already indicate that there is a problem with the monitoring and reporting and not a client device issue ("background activity"). If I top up more, it will just continue dropping and still prove nothing new.
 
elitper said:
Posting here since the Afrihost support route is a dead end.

Had a notification on Sunday morning that my Afrihost mobile data is at 80%. Check in ClientZone, and see data is dropping fast. Phone is on wifi and has been charging, so no active usage. Report to Afrihost and turn off mobile data completely.

Naturally, a lot of back and forth with the Afrihost support email box over the last few days.

Eventually sent this last night

View attachment 919891
View attachment 919893

Allocation of 3GB of data for the month, consumption on Sunday ~9GB, which continued through Monday (another 400MB) even after being "capped". Last session also shows Sunday morning when I turned off mobile data completely.

The latest from Afrihost, quoted verbatim

"Kindly top up and download a bandwidth so we may ascertain whether there is any background activity on your device."

Does this seem logical to anyone else? The screenshots above already indicate that there is a problem with the monitoring and reporting and not a client device issue ("background activity"). If I top up more, it will just continue dropping and still prove nothing new.
Click to expand...

That sounds odd.

Can you send me a pm with your clientzone email so I can have a look at what exactly transpired?
 
Responded on PM. Thanks for looking into it. By the way, phone has not been connected to the Afrihost APN since Sunday, and I've not received the usual notification to check APN settings ("We’ve noticed that you haven’t connected to your Afrihost Mobile Data via APN for....").
 
The plot thickens, just went into ClientZone again. Last session NOW shows Sunday morning 04:21, compared to the screenshot I took earlier this morning (in the post above), which had a last session time of 09:17. Also wildly different IP address.



Screenshot at 2020-09-23 12-48-05.png
 
I hope the issue will be resolved going forward. Sorry for the runaround you have been experiencing.
 
What happened? You got me all excited for this story and then BAM nothing.
 
I got a SMS this morning to say I have used 88.05% of my mobile data. My mobile data was off.
Checked Client Zone & said used 472MB this morning. Glasswire says 2kb used.
Can this be looked into?
Screenshot_20200926-081844.pngScreenshot_20200926-105003.png
 
Number Six said:
I got a SMS this morning to say I have used 88.05% of my mobile data. My mobile data was off.
Checked Client Zone & said used 472MB this morning. Glasswire says 2kb used.
Can this be looked into?
View attachment 921947View attachment 921949
Click to expand...

Hi,

Can you drop me the details in a pm and send me your clientzone so I can see what the issue is. Our Dev team is working on a fix to a bug that is causing this issue with IP sessions that are not correctly recorded on the correct user account.
 
AfriNatic said:
Hi,

Can you drop me the details in a pm and send me your clientzone so I can see what the issue is. Our Dev team is working on a fix to a bug that is causing this issue with IP sessions that are not correctly recorded on the correct user account.
Click to expand...
Thanks I'll drop you a pm in the morning.
 
Same thing happened to me starting from yesterday on two separate mobile accounts. Switched off one of the devices and could see data being depleted even with the device switched off! Logged a call with the support team, but maybe there's a bigger glitch if it's still happening.
 
We have quite a number of reports of issues when it comes to data depletion. We are working on it with the Dev team to fix it asap.
 
Having the same issue and in discussion with @AfriNatic

As per my discussion:

"The issue relating to missing data that other clients has been talking about was related to a different matter.
That has since been resolved. Those clients had no active sessions at all and data was being depleted"

My mobile data usage reflects as zero on both the phones built in tool and glasswire, however as per @AfriNatic, there was a current active session from my phones IMEI depleting the data, even with mobile data being physically turned off.

It boggles me how this is possible? An active session without a connection?

I am inclined to believe that there is a dev issue and the sessions are not terminating correctly, resulting in 'ghost' active sessions depleting data.

Or maybe they know better and I don't know what I'm talking about?
Since the problem is quite evidently an issue prevalent among others - "With no active sessions"?

Lets see what happens. I will monitor this closely now, since there seems to be unexplainable usage happening
 
Last edited:
Kadz said:
@AfriNatic - Interesting points noted in this article regarding "connectivitycheck.gstatic.com"
Despite mobile data switched off, usage is still depleating on WiFi.

mybroadband.co.za

Vodacom disappearing airtime is real – Here are the tests that prove it

Our latest tests found that the airtime balance declined on our Vodacom SIM even when mobile data was off.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
Click to expand...

Morning,

Very interesting indeed. I did read through the article. Our offering is different though. Airmobile clients can only access our network via an APN so any of the LTE radio data and other related data will not be deducted from the usage unless they are connected to via the Afrihost APN.

In cases where clients complained about data depleting on Afrihost APN and said they were connected via Wifi the data session was still open on the APN. I blame Android for this because why does Android have to establish a connection to the APN when it's connected to wifi because it does. It keeps the mobile APN connection open at all times even if the device is connected to the wifi.

You can test this yourself by actually removing ALL apns from the settings and only using wifi then you will not see any sessions connected to the APN and no data depletion on our side and no airtime loss at all.
 
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