Big MTN mobile data outage
MTN users across South Africa reported the operator’s data network was slow or offline for several hours on Wednesday, 12 October 2022.
Downdetector and Twitter showed numerous reports of slow or no responses when using data services on MTN’s network, starting from around 11:30 AM.
“Been unable to use my phone’s Internet services, my one and only social media network (Twitter) because of some funny @mtnza issues!” one user on Twitter complained.
“@MTNza, what’s happening with the network? Are you guys okay there? We’re not connected,” another said.
“Is MTN data down? All devices with MTN not connecting,” a third user stated.
Several users from other African countries — including Nigeria — also complained about connectivity problems.
South African Internet service providers that sell LTE products on MTN’s network confirmed they were investigating the issue.
These included Afrihost, RSAWeb, Supersonic, and Vox.
“We are investigating reports of no connectivity affecting clients on our fixed LTE and MTN mobile network,” Afrihost said.
“We are working on identifying and resolving this issue as quickly as possible.”
RSAWeb said it was observing a national MTN network outage affecting LTE and fixed-LTE services and that its engineers were investigating.
The graph below from Downdetector shows the surge in complaints relating to MTN network issues on Wednesday.
MyBroadband asked MTN for comment on the apparent outage.
MTN South Africa executive for corporate affairs, Jacqui O’Sullivan, confirmed the operator was aware of the issue and was urgently attending to it.
O’Sullivan said the operator required more time to gather additional information with regards to the outage’s extent, cause, and an estimated time to restoration.
MyBroadband will update this article with further details as soon as received.
Update — 15:23
O’Sullivan said the issue was resolved and the network was returning to normal performance.
“MTN would like to apologise to its customers for the network interruptions 4G and 5G some users may have experienced earlier today,” O’Sullivan said.
“Investigations are underway into what caused the intermittent interruptions, which affected certain VoLTE calls, some mobile calls and some data connections.”
“We thank our customers for their patience and appreciate their ongoing support.”
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