Vodacom have caps?

[ic]

Cue ic, morkhans and everyone else to jump in here and beat me up some more on not having real-time contract billing engines in place.

Whist it is my single biggest gripe with Vodacom's contract systems, I would never hold you personally responsible.

On the legacy issue, it is my understanding that these legacy post-paid systems [equally applicable to MTN] were originally developed and supplied by the cellular hardware vendors and were designed to only work with their hardware, ergo the inflexibility, and this goes back some 14+ years to the dawn of GSM.

 

[vodacom3g]

Whist it is my single biggest gripe with Vodacom's contract systems, I would never hold you personally responsible.

On the legacy issue, it is my understanding that these legacy post-paid systems [equally applicable to MTN] were originally developed and supplied by the cellular hardware vendors and were designed to only work with their hardware, ergo the inflexibility, and this goes back some 14+ years to the dawn of GSM.

And that 14 years is the problem actually.

As with any system, the billing engines had to evolve to cater for every new product the network decided to launch and after 14 years there is an obscene amount of different products, options and permutations in there, often with very complex business rules.

And while many of these products are not in wide use today the systems must still cater for them. So it is a huge, complex engine.

The newer, real-time systems cannot yet cater for these complex products (so we can't easily port them) and thus we sit with a much simpler set of pre-paid products but with real-time billing and, on the other hand, with a cr@pload of complex legacy products but on the off-line billing engine.

Brining these 2 together is no mean feat.

 

[ic]

And that 14 years is the problem actually.

As with any system, the billing engines had to evolve to cater for every new product the network decided to launch and after 14 years there is an obscene amount of different products, options and permutations in there, often with very complex business rules.

And while many of these products are not in wide use today the systems must still cater for them. So it is a huge, complex engine.

The newer, real-time systems cannot yet cater for these complex products (so we can't easily port them) and thus we sit with a much simpler set of pre-paid products but with real-time billing and, on the other hand, with a cr@pload of complex legacy products but on the off-line billing engine.

Brining these 2 together is no mean feat.

Yep, I think I am probably one of very few forumites that can appreciate the complexities involved, having said that I also believe that it is something that has to be 'fixed' at all costs.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

You can set a bandwidth cap (soft-lock) on your data account, just like you can do a voice one. And they actually use the same system and thus suffer from the same limitations, mainly not being real-time.

Cue ic, morkhans and everyone else to jump in here and beat me up some more on not having real-time contract billing engines in place.

Thanks. Going to ask my SP how to set this. In all the online docs I found it only refered to voice calls (But I can confirm that PSMS are not capped - yet).

 

[chiskop]

Thanks. Going to ask my SP how to set this. In all the online docs I found it only refered to voice calls (But I can confirm that PSMS are not capped - yet).

Call 155 and asked to be soft capped. [-]AFAIK they send you a form to sign and that's it.[/-]

Do you get notifications on your data usage? I get SMSes at 50%, 85% and 100% of my bundle usage. I don't recall having to set that up, though ALTNUM is useful if you're using a router (as I am) or don't check SMSes on your data sim.

 

[vodacom3g]

Call 155 and asked to be soft capped. [-]AFAIK they send you a form to sign and that's it.[/-]

Do you get notifications on your data usage? I get SMSes at 50%, 85% and 100% of my bundle usage. I don't recall having to set that up, though ALTNUM is useful if you're using a router (as I am) or don't check SMSes on your data sim.

ALTNUM: Another myBB product

 

[morkhans]

ALTNUM: Another myBB product

Is ALTNUM on pre-paid still in the works?

 

[vodacom3g]

Is ALTNUM on pre-paid still in the works?

Need to remember why it could not be done when post-paid was done, but as a general answer; there was no intention NOT to do it for pre-paid.

So, short answer is yes.

 

[mwooding]

Whatever you do, don't put a soft lock on as its impossible to get it off.. 3G locked forever......

 

[AirWolf]

IMO, it is best to stick to prepaid/top up to avoid going OOB/being soft capped.