"Emergency calls only" - MTN

[jb007za]

Anybody care to shed some light on this matter... wondering if I'm the only one???

I have a Sony Ericsson W810i on an MTN contract. I live in Cape Town and my phone often says "Emergency Calls Only" and won't dial out, receive calls, SMS, etc for a few minutes. This has been happening for many months now.

Admittedly, this tends to happen when reception is poor but also occurs when I have three or four bars worth of reception.

I used my phone overseas recently without any problems.

Any ideas why?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Moederloos]

SIM card is loose.

 

[porn$tar]

happened to me about 2 months ago. first happened sporadically, then permanently. Your SIM card is on it's way out. Only solution is a SIM swap at any MTN store, takes about 10 minutes and it's free.

 

[kokzn]

happened to me about 2 months ago. first happened sporadically, then permanently. Your SIM card is on it's way out. Only solution is a SIM swap at any MTN store, takes about 10 minutes and it's free.

Free?
Not according to MTN shop in brooklyn pretoria.
I wanted to upgrade my 7yo 16K sim there to at 32K and they told me it cost about R100...
note: I'm on prepaid

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Free?
Not according to MTN shop in brooklyn pretoria.
I wanted to upgrade my 7yo 16K sim there to at 32K and they told me it cost about R100...
note: I'm on prepaid

ditch the sim and buy a new one?

cost less than a chappie nowadays...

 

[Just_Ice]

ditch the sim and buy a new one?

cost less than a chappie nowadays...

Not quite but almost
You can get 4 chappies for R2

 

[porn$tar]

I just did a straight SIM swap, maybe an upgrade is different? Or maybe it's got something to do with being on Contract. Anyway, I was expecting to pay for it, but when they said there was no charge i grabbed my phone and high-tailed it out of there before they could change their mind.

 

[jb007za]

Thanks guys, hadn't thought of that... about to go back to prepaid from contract so will get new SIM then. I had a niggling suspicion it may have been the network (MTN have suffered some bad press with network congestion claims recently) but the suggestions here make more sense.