The mystery of disappearing Vodacom airtime

[Bradley Prior]

The mystery of disappearing Vodacom airtime

Vodacom subscribers are losing airtime and the mobile operator is unable to explain why this happens.

 

[Sarg3_ZN]

Maybe they are using airtime to bankroll political parties

 

[Kola_CT]

Unexplained... makes sense, it is not as if this can be measured and traced...

Den of thieves, printing their own money.

 

[cavedog]

The problem is with android.

I have seen a similar issue where even if the phone is on wifi and a stable connection the apn stil connects and although no data is being transferred the phone still auths using the APN. If anything android skips the wifi connection and just establishes a connection via the apn it will consume data.

The real issue is not blocking OOB usage by default. MTN and Telkom redirects you to a nofunds.mtn.co.za , oob.telkom.co.za pages and those pages are zero rated so even if there is a connection established with the APN no data will be transferred.

 

[Willie Trombone]

iOS devices have a setting under your WiFi profile called 'Auto Join'. My wife's phone was disconnecting from WiFi when idle and not reconnecting. Turning this off fixed that issue. Seems obvious in hindsight, but somehow this had been turned off - possibly accidentally - and the result was that every time the phone was left alone, she had to manually connect on WiFi again.

 

[jannievanzyl]

It seems Android still uses the mobile connection even though it's connected on Wi-Fi. We traced it to a "connectivitycheck.gstatic.com" URL.

 

[McGuywer]

Vodacom said it puts a Data Limit Lock (DLL) on a new SIM and will allow the SIM to go OOB, using any airtime balance. Only once a bundle is purchased will OOB charges be stopped.

This feels unfair and backwards thinking.
Obviously making OOB money is the source of this decision.

 

[elvis_presley]

Actually makes sense... sounds like Android's fault ... it makes sense that they'd do some pings over mobile data to test the mobile connection. There's not really any other way of doing it. Perhaps MTN and Telkom just got ahead of the curve and zero-rated that IP.

 

[jannievanzyl]

This feels unfair and backwards thinking.
Obviously making OOB money is the source of this decision.

There are quite a lot of people who use SIMs for data and don't want to set up and try and manage bundles. These subs prefer to just pay a flat rate per MB, irrespective of the data they use. Think the many different telemetry/IoT applications out there.

However, once you've activated a data bundle, Vodacom will block all OOB. But, if you take out a new SIM, OOB is possible (for the above scenario) until you load a bundle. Then the SIM automatically defaults to no OOB.

Not so backwards, once you think of all the possible ways people want to use mobile data.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Actually makes sense... sounds like Android's fault ... it makes sense that they'd do some pings over mobile data to test the mobile connection. There's not really any other way of doing it. Perhaps MTN and Telkom just got ahead of the curve and zero-rated that IP.

Clearly I'm speculating, but I assume they just block it outright. I traced the URLs and they're pretty obscure, doubt if they have specifically been zero-rated.

But, it was surprising that Android seems to still use the mobile connection when Wi-Fi is active.

 

[Realmrbean]

Android = CIA /NSA

 

[elvis_presley]

Clearly I'm speculating, but I assume they just block it outright. I traced the URLs and they're pretty obscure, doubt if they have specifically been zero-rated.

If they were going to take the time to take action on the URL, it's easy enough to zero-rate it, and if they straight blocked it, it would probably cause all kinds of issues with Android phones thinking they're offline when they're not.

But, it was surprising that Android seems to still use the mobile connection when Wi-Fi is active.

Yes, it's surprising they use the mobile connection, but if you think about in hindsight it then it's obvious that they would have to, there's no other way of achieving that mobile heartbeat check without doing it.

 

[access]

why are the os service usages different, were different phones or os versions used? telkom has about 2mb used, cell c only 0.1mb

were the sims and phones swapped around in this test?

could be more advanced location tracking or a side effect of wifi power saving..

 

[Easter Bunny]

have a look under the "development settings" on the android device. there's a "mobile data always on" setting that you can try disable.

but anyway, if you're OOB, then you shouldn't be charged for web usage. vodacom and cellc are obviously charging you for the privilege of doing a web request and then being blocked because you don't have data (like asking for a balance at the atm).

 

[Raphael123]

Again

 

[grok]

Again

Knowing Vodacom they're running the blended accuracy logging program again..

 

[Willie Trombone]

It seems Android still uses the mobile connection even though it's connected on Wi-Fi. We traced it to a "connectivitycheck.gstatic.com" URL.

I've noticed this too. You just have to watch the screen sometimes - wifi will be on but LTE will occasionally show traffic.

 

[Double B]

How about trying the same test but using four iPhones instead? That way we can see if android itself really is to blame.

 

[centurionguy]

The question is why the phones used mobile data to connect to the google services instead of wifi. Maybe this is a phone anomaly. Statistically the test is incomplete because only one phone per network was used. Try setting up all 4 phones on one network and see if they all give identical data usage.

 

[Moosedrool]

negligible amounts

Vodacom has around: 39.4 million subscribers.