Need help setting up apn

[Drakarin]

Good evening everyone.
I hope this community is having a better week than I am.

To start things off let me tell my story from the beginning. Three weeks back i went to my local vodacom shop and bought a prepaid sim and asked them for the paper to apply for the unrestricted apn. I waited until this monday and nothing happened. Not a call, sms or anything of the sort so I went back to the vodacom shop and told them my issue. They called their tech department, emailed the documents again and handed me over to them. The gentleman, after asking a thousand and one questions told me that he will put in a query and someone will contact me within 48 hours. Two days later i received an sms with the link to download the request papers and a notification that my query has been closed.
Now its putting it lightly to say that I lost my ****. I mean what the hell. They didn't even try.
So last night I phoned them and told them i wanted it sorted and after moving between 6 consultant who each wanted to troubleshoot my device in stead of doing what i ask i finally got put through to a lady that works at altron who helped me get my papers uploaded and told me someone will be in contact the next morning (today).
Guess who didn't get a call from vodacom.
I called them again and this time I used words that would make a pirate cringe. Long story short the guy got my unrestricted apn approved and told me it will take an hour to activate on the sim. No instructions were given on how to set up the new apn so i tried to call once again. And this time i got absolutely nowhere because for some reason she couldn't find a solution to my question and didn't want to put me through to anyone else. All i got out of her was confirmation that the unrestricted apn is activated on my sim.

I phoned a friend and he said that an easy way to check it. Would be to connect to a ps3 and see if the nat type is 1 2 or 3. If its 3 it's still restricted. I have no idea what a nat is and i dont care. I want the unrestricted apn to work with my router and dvr of my cameras.
Can anyone please tell me how to set up the apn because vodacom customer care is absolutely useless.
I've attached a photo to show what the current apn is

 

[lowriderza]

The last time I had to deal with what you're talking about we ended up just switching ISP's as it was an option and my business partner at the time was starting to loose his marbles.

Back then all the heavy lifting was done or their side. So if you finally got through to somebody who understood what you were talking about, the just opened the applicable ports for your specific connection based on your sim and off you went.

I would test to see if it's working using Remote Desktop as a lot of DVR's suck at setting up any secure connection to begin with to save a bit of time.

 

[Drakarin]

See i was under the impression unrestricted meant just that. UNRESTRICTED. now I'm going to have to pay the technician who installed all this stuff to come and try and connect this stuff because i have no idea. I would have used telkom for this, i actually bought a telkom sim and it worked but it buffers for days when i want to check the cams on my phone because the telkom network is **** where i live and i refuse to pay R800+ pm for adsl which i will never use because i am never home.

I mean is it so difficult to just do what i ask them to do? You'd think I told them to do the impossible

 

[daneza]

Afrihost say their apn is unrestricted. Try giving them a call to see if their Cell C or Air Mobile packages will work for you.

From what I'm reading in other threads, it's a big fight to try and get an unrestricted apn from anyone other than Telkom. You're asking for something unusual from a company whose network is degrading fast and can't even give proper service to the resellers who are supposed to be convincing other people to buy their packages.

No one is keeping our networks in check, so lies, extortion, powerless call centres, convoluted contracts and holding our credit records to ransom have become the norm.

 

[ginggs]

Can anyone please tell me how to set up the apn because vodacom customer care is absolutely useless.

Try click Edit and change the Apn from internet to unrestricted.

If that doesn't work, try click New and create a new profile.

 

[lowriderza]

See i was under the impression unrestricted meant just that. UNRESTRICTED. now I'm going to have to pay the technician who installed all this stuff to come and try and connect this stuff because i have no idea. I would have used telkom for this, i actually bought a telkom sim and it worked but it buffers for days when i want to check the cams on my phone because the telkom network is **** where i live and i refuse to pay R800+ pm for adsl which i will never use because i am never home.

I mean is it so difficult to just do what i ask them to do? You'd think I told them to do the impossible

If it worked fine on Telkom there's only a few reasons it wouldn't work immediately on the Vodacom sim if it is indeed now unrestricted.

As for your difficulties in getting them do what you require, yes it is very difficult. Not because of what you're asking but because the quality of client facing support staff is pathetic. I often get paid really good mo ey just to pick up a phone and deal with call centers. There are also a few other issues that @daneza mentioned. Just smile and wave... and try not to kill anybody

 

[krieg]

Have you got a dynamic DNS feature on your router? Less hassle going that route.