{"id":348207,"date":"2020-04-24T16:29:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T14:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=348207"},"modified":"2020-04-24T16:29:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T14:29:44","slug":"rain-fixed-lte-data-depletion-order-on-top-up-bundles-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/348207-rain-fixed-lte-data-depletion-order-on-top-up-bundles-explained.html","title":{"rendered":"Rain fixed-LTE data depletion order on top-up bundles explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rain fixed-LTE customers should take note of the mobile network’s data depletion order when purchasing top-up bundles.<\/p>\n

An Afrihost customer using Rain’s fixed-LTE service recently told MyBroadband he was experiencing an issue with the order in which his data was being consumed.<\/p>\n

He claimed that his top-up data was depleting before his included monthly data allocation.<\/p>\n

This appeared to go against ICASA’s regulations on data depletion, which determined that data must be consumed on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis.<\/p>\n

According to ICASA, whichever bundle was purchased or allocated first must be consumed before data depletion on a bundle bought at a later stage starts.<\/p>\n

Peak and Off-peak<\/h3>\n

Rain divides data allocations to fixed-LTE customers on its network between peak and off-peak periods.<\/p>\n

Peak data is consumed between 18:00 and 23:00, while off-peak data is used in the remaining hours each day.<\/p>\n

Every month the customer in question is allocated 25GB peak data and 25GB off-peak data.<\/p>\n

In March, he purchased an all-hours top-up bundle to avoid running out of data. He still had 953MB peak and 1.92GB off-peak data remaining for the month at this point.<\/p>\n

He then noticed that his included data was no longer being consumed, but that his top-up data was being depleted.<\/p>\n

This meant that just under 3GB of included data would expire at the end of March if he did not finish his top-up bundle first.<\/p>\n

The screenshot on the left shows his data usage according to the Afrihost dashboard at 22:17 on 27 March, while the right side indicates his usage at 07:30 on 28 March.<\/p>\n

\"Rain<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Issue continues<\/h3>\n

The problem persisted in a slightly different form the following month.<\/p>\n

After running out of off-peak data, he loaded his account with a 30-day top-up bundle of 20GB on 11 April.<\/p>\n

He still had 8.7GB peak data remaining, which was set to expire on 30 April, but no off-peak data.<\/p>\n

In this case, it can be expected that the top-up allocation would be consumed first during off-peak hours, as the customer had no data remaining for these periods.<\/p>\n

However, the customer’s usage showed that even when he was using the Internet during peak periods, the top-up data would be consumed, instead of his remaining included data.<\/p>\n

He provided the following screenshots from different times during peak hours on 12 April, which showed his peak data remained at 8.7GB.<\/p>\n

The first image is from 20:21, the second from 21:13 and the third was taken at 22:17.<\/p>\n

\"Rain<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Afrihost’s response to client<\/h3>\n

The customer contacted Afrihost to query why this was happening.<\/p>\n

A support team member reportedly said the issue would be escalated, as the included data should have been used first.<\/p>\n

In subsequent correspondence, however, the user said Afrihost did not directly address the issue of peak data being depleted – and said the problem was linked to the user running out of off-peak data.<\/p>\n

It said the customer had to provide proof of the depletion of the top-up bundle while he had off-peak data available.<\/p>\n

\n

Rain responds<\/h3>\n

Rain’s Chief Marketing Officer Khaya Dlanga told MyBroadband that most of the network’s users purchased top-up bundles only after their monthly allocations had depleted.<\/p>\n

“In rare instances, some customers top up before exhausting their allocation or at least close to it,” Dlanga said.<\/p>\n

He confirmed that in cases where data is topped up before included data is depleted, the top-up allocation will be consumed first as it has a 30-day lifespan.<\/p>\n

“The unused portion of monthly peak data, if any, is rolled over without charge, for a further one calendar month,” Dlanga explained.<\/p>\n

This means that the monthly allocation of Rain’s fixed-LTE customers should effectively be valid for 60 days and customers should be able to use any remaining data in the following month.<\/p>\n

Afrihost confirmed to MyBroadband that this was the case for its Rain fixed-LTE product.<\/p>\n

It must be noted that Rain’s fixed-LTE product is no longer available for purchase from ISPs. Sales of the product were suspended<\/strong> <\/a>at the end of 2018 due to capacity constraints on Rain’s network.<\/p>\n

Existing subscribers were allowed to continue using the service.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: 768GB in a month \u2013 Top mobile data users during the lockdown<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rain fixed-LTE customers should take note of the mobile network’s data depletion order when purchasing top-up bundles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":284336,"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_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1669,35,43716,52217],"class_list":["post-348207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-afrihost","tag-headline","tag-rain","tag-rain-fixed-lte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348207"}],"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\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349449,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348207\/revisions\/349449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}