MTN network problems continue into second day
Several MTN customers have continued to report issues with their Internet connectivity for a second day following an upgrade-induced fault on the operator’s network.
Scores of customers reported that they could not use mobile data or had intermittent connectivity for eight hours on Tuesday, 22 November 2022.
In a statement in the evening, the company explained the issue occurred after an upgrade on a part of its network.
“The fault has been repaired and MTN apologises to any customers that may have been inconvenienced by this matter,” MTN said.
However, from around 07:00 AM on Wednesday, 23 November 2022, it appeared that pockets of MTN users were still having problems.
After a rapid decline in reports on Downdetector by Tuesday evening, there was a slight uptick from just after 05:00 AM on Wednesday.
Most of the reports were flagged with “Mobile Internet” being the problem, followed by “No Signal”.
The screenshot below shows reports of problems with MTN services on Downdetector over the past 24 hours.
A quick test by MyBroadband showed intermittent or slow connectivity on an Afrihost Fixed-LTE connection running on MTN’s network in Centurion.
Several other MyBroadband readers using MTN mobile broadband products as their primary home connections reported they had no connectivity whatsoever.
Twitter also showed several complaints from MTN mobile and fixed-LTE customers in several parts of the country.
“My phone says I have data [signal] but nothing is working,” one user stated.
“Your mobile network is still not working properly… needing to rely on Wi-Fi just to be able to let you know this,” a second said.
“My network is still down. When will this be completely fixed? I have clients needing to contact me and my daughter’s school will not be able to get hold of me if there is an emergency,” a third user complained.
MTN’s support team on Twitter blamed the issues on load-shedding preventing mobile tower batteries from recharging sufficiently to continue providing coverage during power outages.
MyBroadband asked MTN for comment on the latest issues but did not immediately receive feedback to our queries.
Update — 10:41
MTN told MyBroadband its network traffic trends were following historic patterns, suggesting it was not seeing any issues on the network on its side.
“The network has stabilised and we are continuing to optimise and monitor but no new incidents have occurred,” the operator said.
It acknowledged that the current load-shedding presented an additional challenge, but that issues relating to this would be more localised.
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