Android glitch may be the cause of disappearing airtime in South Africa

[Bradley Prior]

Android glitch may be the cause of disappearing airtime in South Africa

An issue of "disappearing airtime" on the Cell C, Vodacom, and MTN networks that MyBroadband recently discovered may be due to an issue with Android.

 

[Herr der Verboten]

PleaseCallMe

 

[Swa]

Sounds more like this is an issue with networks not detecting usage correctly.

 

[backstreetboy]

Lol how about selling bigger data bundles you perpetual retards? Even the KaiOS feature phone I have is data hungry.

 

[nahoR]

Well I have a MTN and Vodacom simcard in my phone with MTN selected as the sim from which to use data and still the vodacom looses airtime, its only a few cents a day

 

[isie]

Android glitch may be the cause of disappearing airtime in South Africa

An issue of "disappearing airtime" on the Cell C, Vodacom, and MTN networks that MyBroadband recently discovered may be due to an issue with Android.

Now I bet they will use this as an excuse for every time airtime disappears.
User has iPhone complains airtime is disappearing.
SP response there is an android bug causing this

 

[mercurial]

Passing the buck so that they can, you know, get the buck(s).

 

[j4ck455]

No longer was the data depletion as a result of Google services such as “connectivitycheck.gstatic.com”. Instead, data was being routed to resources which belong to Amazon, HP, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, China Telecom, and MIT.

That is a strange mix of hosts, and I know this is a long shot, but could it be NTP related (@Jan)?

What happens when a VPN is installed like the 1.1.1.1 app and mobile data is switched off?

 

[NeoAcheron]

To be perfectly honest, in 2020 still measuring how many "MB" of data you used over a few days is stupid. Charging people R2 a megabyte out of bundle is even worse.

Fun fact: If you use 16 bytes of LTE data in one connection session, and close the connection, the networks will charge you for a full LTE packet, which can be as high as 400 bytes. If you phone is simply trying to look up a DNS record (which can be between 50 bytes and 550 bytes) and then closes the connection, you get 400 - 800 bytes deducted from your airtime... (This was the case a few years ago)

While I understand the frustration, this stupid way that SA networks bill customers is what's the real problem. Stop charging people by the megabyte, move to bigger bundles which will allow better adoption, increasing the customer base, which make you more money...

 

[Mampara]

Vodascum and Cell C does this magical disappearing airtime so that you can keep recharging your fone with airtime. It's their new way of making money since data charges must come down. Now they blame Google for disappearing airtime. Does Google give you minutes??? Passing the buck. Vodascum also charges R800 for a 20/5 meg fibre line while others charge R600 for 20meg fibre. That's how they rip off customers

 

[JacquesSteffen]

I am with Vodacom and have no issues. It has nothing to do with Android perse and everything to do with settings.

 

[Smiley_lauf]

why not warn the user about the background app eating up the data--and request switching thee off. or Google sponsoring extra-data through the network providers for this? Phones always want to be connected and learn from our usage, it is not a phone or user thing, but feature of the phone. Increase overheads and transfer the costs to the phone OS and network providers--they are the ones that learn and use our usage data and sell back to us products we do not want. In fact, make data FREE (like water, minimum usage). There you go.

 

[gfmalan]

So does that mean the Huawei dongle runs Android? Aah That explains it!

 

[system32]

@Editors, try the test on an iPhone

 

[Rozannehough]

Android glitch may be the cause of disappearing airtime in South Africa

An issue of "disappearing airtime" on the Cell C, Vodacom, and MTN networks that MyBroadband recently discovered may be due to an issue with Android.

I had 818mb and every 2mins, my data msgs came through saying my balance. Within 6mins my data was gone. Was not using my device at the time, all background apps were closed but never stopped the data disappearing. Reported to vodacom via fb mgr and they refunded 1G. Happened Wed or Thursday last week.