Telkom Infinity vs MTN Sky Platinum vs Rain for smartphones

[Jan]

Uncapped smartphone data showdown — Telkom smashes MTN and takes on Rain

Telkom’s new postpaid uncapped smartphone data product promises much greater value than similar services offered by MTN and Rain, a MyBroadband analysis shows.

Telkom launched its new Infinite and Infinite Max services on 21 June 2022, offering uncapped data, bundled with voice minutes and SMS messages.

 

[marine1]

Rain.....ha ha
Worst product I have ever used. If you are not in a complete sweet spot it's unusable

 

[skyw4lk3r]

@Jan

The comparison doesn't include any mention of hot spots being prevented on telkom,

But your previous article states :

"Telkom said its new Infinite uncapped data plans were specifically designed for personal use in smartphones and may not be used in Wi-Fi hotspots or routers."

So can a phone be used as a hot spot on telkoms infinite plans or not?

 

[ToxicBunny]

@Jan

The comparison doesn't include any mention of hot spots being prevented on telkom,

But your previous article states :

"Telkom said its new Infinite uncapped data plans were specifically designed for personal use in smartphones and may not be used in Wi-Fi hotspots or routers."

So can a phone be used as a hot spot on telkoms infinite plans or not?

How would Telkom be able to stop you enabling the Wi-Fi hotspot feature on your phone?

 

[skyw4lk3r]

How would Telkom be able to stop you enabling the Wi-Fi hotspot feature on your phone?

How do rain and mtn claim to do it?

 

[ToxicBunny]

How do rain and mtn do it?

That would be news to me if they do... and somewhat alarming that a SIM has that sort of power over a cellphone to change features of that nature.

 

[skyw4lk3r]

You could enable and connect to the hotspot, but no traffic would be allowed to the pc by the network based on traffic analysis or something as far as I understand.
Or otherwise it would just be a threat and unimplementable.
Someone with experience in this regard can shed some light on the matter.

Any which way, shouldn't the article say that all the contracts being compared don't allow hot spotting.

 

[system32]

@Jan

The comparison doesn't include any mention of hot spots being prevented on telkom,

But your previous article states :

"Telkom said its new Infinite uncapped data plans were specifically designed for personal use in smartphones and may not be used in Wi-Fi hotspots or routers."

So can a phone be used as a hot spot on telkoms infinite plans or not?

Set the ttl
# iptables -t mangle -I FORWARD -o "${NET_DEV}" -j TTL --ttl-set 65

 

[TheRoDent]

How would Telkom be able to stop you enabling the Wi-Fi hotspot feature on your phone?

Apparently this works by the operator forcibly setting the TTL (Time-To-Live) for incoming packets on that APN, so that if a packet does get forwarded via the 4G/LTE modem over a WiFi hotspot interface, the TTL is decremented such that the phone will drop the outgoing packet on the hotspot interface because the TTL has gone to zero.

There is some information how to mangle/bypass this here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...t-carrier-check-bypass-methods.3825144/page-2 but it will typically require root access etc.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Apparently this works by the operator forcibly setting the TTL (Time-To-Live) for incoming packets on that APN, so that if a packet does get forwarded via the 4G/LTE modem over a WiFi hotspot interface, the TTL is decremented such that the phone will drop the outgoing packet on the hotspot interface because the TTL has gone to zero.

There is some information how to mangle/bypass this here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...t-carrier-check-bypass-methods.3825144/page-2 but it will typically require root access etc.

Intriguing solution...

So they're not obviously screwing with the phone itself, but the packets. Makes sense.

 

[m4tic]

Rain.....ha ha
Worst product I have ever used. If you are not in a complete sweet spot it's unusable

I'm very lucky, I stay in a rural area and have good connectivity. We use a rain router in the house, 4 adults and 1 kid. Everyone's always watching some video and it never becomes bad. I download ps4 games overnight though as it can cripple the network.