MTN Northriding Serious 3G Data Issues

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Reine_Viper

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I am seriously at wits end with MTN in the North Riding Area, Johannesburg - Agricultural Holdings.

Me and my partner enjoy gaming online and recently (4 months ago) after having a go with all the network providers, MTN came out tops for providing decent latency (230ms on average) for playing on international servers.

So I did the natural thing and went for a 2gb top up package with wifi modem for about R200.00 a month. Pretty expensive but no telephone lines means no ADSL.

A few weeks ago something seriously went wrong as my 3G data service started bombing out on my cellphone on a regular basis for an extended time period, which has now reached a clinical stage with my wifi modem - providing the normal pings of 230ms on international servers, with the dreaded 1.5k + spikes every minute or so.

Now, after complaining to Hellopeter.com about the shoddy service - you get more responses from doing that than anywhere else, I was greeted with the copy/paste scenario and had to mail a "template" detailing my MTN woes.

Been there, done that, now moving on...I phoned MTN Coverage and the lady shared some vital information with me. Since 21 January 2013, a MTN tower has gone down in our area, with all traffic being diverted/shared to the closest towers around it, thereby increasing congestion to such a state, that you cannot even load a page properly at times, whether it be on the cellphone or notebook, as in my case.

Now what makes it even more frustrating, the repair was scheduled to be done by the 11/02/2013 - that's right, effectively 3 weeks turnaround time. Low and behold, it has still not been repaired.

I am now paying for a service that I cannot enjoy and use for the intention I went about applying for a contract.

I am not going to leave matters like this however, as I fear the service might not run as per its original state once the tower is back online. Service delivery in this country is of real concern and I will give them my money's worth to make sure they fix the issue, or give them a nasty head-ache at least.

Anyone else having problems lately? Thought at first it was due to LTE upgrades - think again lol and to top it all off the news of MTN "shedding" towers to a 3rd party is bound to bring problems and raise concerns with the average clued-up consumer.
 
I feel you! MTN's Uncapped Lite package has also been horrendous as of late, to be exact, since the 7th of Feb. I've had it since July 2012 and have had absolutely NO PROBLEMS whatsoever up until the 7th of Feb 2013 when all went to hell.

Emailing, phoning and complaining doesn't work at all as they just give the same line over and over again. They don't answer the question, not at all. Everybody, nationally, are complaining about Uncapped Lite. Again, the service was fine when all of a sudden, on the 7th of Feb, became basically unusable.
 
I have found that Hellopeter.com does get you response, albeit generic ones most of the time. I have been on their case since joining the network on a contract basis for the past 20 months :confused: Billing Issues mostly - 3 contracts with them :wtf: Had a look at the uncapped package but their usage / throttling policies made me go with a top up package instead. Phoned MTN Coverage now, whereby they at least acknowledged there is a problem in the area and that the "techies" are still assigned to fixing the problem.

Note assigned, not fixing the issue as yet. Having a look at the issues you are experiencing, it may be that they bit off more than they could chew. I have a brother gaming on standard Cell C prepaid 3G - in n dorpie nogal - with higher international latencies (293ms) but way more stable than MTN's 220-230ms latency :confused:

I have an upgrade due now in June - hoping MTN LTE will be ready to move across to, with the proper phone of course. Not bargaining on super stability or proper coverage though.
 
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The Uncapped package has been really great up until the 7th of Feb. Even when throttled, the speeds and latency weren't bad, I could easily do some online gaming without too much hassle (only online racing though, I understand that with online shooters you need latency of below 100).

Since late Dec 2012 the throttled speed even increased from plus / minus 300 / 350kbps to 700 / 750kbps (download) and the international latency were seldom higher that 250ms.

Well now, if you're lucky, while throttled, you'll maybe get download speeds of 150 / 200kbps and sometimes it goes as low as 20kbps with 500+ latency which obviously makes it near impossible to game online.

Since this crap began I got myself a Cell C sim card, loaded it with 300MB and tested it with some online racing. Great experience, no problems. Thing is, Uncapped Lite is a 24 month contract so I'm screwed for the next year and a half. I'm now paying R319 a month for 3GB. The first 3GB is great of course but now, when the throttling kicks in, it's pterry much useless.
 
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I only play LoL online, so I do not need the increased cap limit as yet ;)

According to speedtest im currently doing: 13.25mb down and 1.89mb up internationally, with a ping of 223ms.
Wonderful, but the stability has been an issue for about 10 days now :( hoping they will sort it out very soon :D

If they are now throttling more excessively than before, I believe it may be the lack of proper infrastructure maintenance and expansion.
 
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Their responses are so bad, I wonder how they maintain that sort of consistent low standard throughout the organisation.

As for your current problem, i think 8ta does a 2GB prepaid for R 149 once off, this is what I used when my MTN didn't work, their line quality isn't good, but it a very good temporary solution. I think people should use this before signing any new contract in order to see how LTE turns out.
 
Service levels in general is bad in our beloved country. The monopoly the big guys have tend to cause this.

The tower in our area is yet to be fixed - three engineers assigned since 14/02 - figure its quite an issue as it is still not fixed, and the dates contradict each other as I was initially told the tower had been offline since January :confused:

I have tried all networks with MTN being the most stable. 8ta/Vodacom and the like disconnect like crazy :wtf:
 
I am highly disgusted with the way MTN is handling the 3G coverage issue in the North Riding / Olievenpoort Area.

Due to network faults/failure on a tower - since late January 2013, the network has become highly congested during peak times and even at odd hours.

I have 3 contracts with MTN, with a fourth that I had considered, but due to the lack of proper reponses and service delivery, I will be looking to exit my contracts early through means of the CPA due to non-performance delivered by MTN - even if I have to fax through the same paperwork 100 times!

My data modem has become useless. The latency and sudden excessive spikes has caused me endless trouble and I no longer wish to deal with customer services, as all I receive is a generic response in that technicians are working on the problem and the turnaround time will be escalated. Thats where the service delivery stops.

My one cellphone contract is nearly up and MTN has forced me to move over to another network. I am tired of looking for answers and I will ensure proper coverage of the issues are made clear on the internet as well as local media.

I am being charged for services that are not working properly and the excuses are getting long in the tooth.

I am posting this to get hits on google (lol :p) and Hellopeter will be getting its mails every 5 days from 4 different email addresses.

Gatvol! :mad:
 
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*Update*

Please note we are currently experiencing problems with our sites T194,T6881 & T2429 in the area of Northriding. Our Engineers are attending to them.

T194- SMC/00003457332

T6881-SMC/00003496272

T2429-SMC/00003490940


Obvious question - turnaround time for fixing the issues? :wtf: note 3 sites in a single area, imagine what the rest of the country have to deal with considering 3G went haywire a month ago and is yet to be returned to a normal operating state :confused:
 
*Update 2*

Good Day,

Kindly be advised that when the tower is off we cannot advise the turnaround time because when the tower is down or faulty it involved other parties like Telkom for transmission link, Eskom for power and Ericsson for configurations <- wt...:wtf:

So businesses and private consumers have no way of telling when service is expected to be reinstated? :sick:

Thanks alot MTN - milk us more for extremely high data costs - data we cannot use properly! :mad:
 
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