Cell C and Vodacom have told MyBroadband they do not charge subscribers for the data used by LTE devices to connect to their respective networks.<\/p>\n
This follows an investigation by MyBroadband which revealed that airtime was \u201cdisappearing\u201d from two MTN prepaid SIMs<\/strong><\/a> installed in LTE-capable smartphones.<\/p>\n Airtime was consumed by out-of-bundle data usage, despite mobile data on the devices being switched off. The devices were also connected to a Wi-Fi connection with Internet access.<\/p>\n MTN said the airtime usage was a result of LTE being a data-only technology.<\/p>\n As LTE is an all Internet Protocol network, this results in LTE devices using data packets to establish a connection to the network – even if the mobile data usage option in a device’s operating system is disabled.<\/p>\n Telkom said it does not view this \u201cLTE connection data\u201d<\/strong><\/a> in the same way as mobile data used for websites or apps.<\/p>\n \u201cPackets are transmitted to the network to authenticate the device so it can attach to the network, this is different to Internet traffic,\u201d said Telkom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe classify that as control plane traffic, whereas data from the handset when a subscriber is browsing is user plane traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n Vodacom and Cell C confirmed they, like Telkom, do not charge for this \u201ccontrol plane\u201d data.<\/p>\n The data is effectively zero-rated, as it is not billed. Vodacom said that as a result of the data not being billed, it doesn\u2019t measure how much is consumed to set up an LTE session between devices and the network.<\/p>\n \u201cWe only charge for data used to do Internet activities. Setting up the connection to be able to do this is considered non-billable,\u201d said Vodacom.<\/p>\n Cell C said it doesn\u2019t charge for control plane data as it believes it is a network cost and it has set up its systems to reflect this.<\/p>\n Both networks said this has been their method of operation since the launch of LTE in South Africa.<\/p>\n Cell C and Vodacom have confirmed they do not charge subscribers when LTE devices connect to their respective networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":158279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,35863,35,18116,41],"class_list":["post-221695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-disappearing-airtime","tag-headline","tag-long-term-evolution-lte","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221721,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221695\/revisions\/221721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}No charge for subscribers<\/h3>\n
Now read: Why airtime doesn\u2019t disappear on Telkom\u2019s LTE network<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"