Tag: mtn

Categories
Freedom Mobile Rants Technology

Dear MTN Retentions Department

MTN asked my reasons for moving to prepaid. So I told them.

Good day,

Although my technical experience with MTN has been excellent, I have had numerous problems in a number of other areas, specifically related to contract.

1) Price increase during a contract term.
I signed a contract with MTN to pay a certain price for service for 24 months. Half way during this period MTN then decided to raise the price. This is MTN operating in bad faith.

2) When my contract expired, nobody contacted me to offer any upgrade opportunities. Furthermore, I was made to pay an additional R85 for a lousy 300MB of data, something which previously had been included in my contract price.

3) Billing
The invoice and billing system remains a mess. The “Last 3 months Usage” regularly repeats the month. e.g my “Last 3 months” is Feb, Feb, Jan. Statements are not intuitive. Itemised billing is ridiculously overpriced.

4) Web usability
I have a plethora of different login details for all the MTN related websites. mtn.co.za shop.mtn.co.za mycontract.mtn.co.za all have different login methods and randomly get locked requiring more time to attempt to unlock them. The websites are noisy and do not form a cohesive experience. Functionality is often hidden from the user. Also, massive overlaps of functionality exist which is completely unnecessary.

5) Apps
There are 2 MTN apps for iOS that I have installed on my phone. Both are clunky and poorly designed. They appear to have been created by amateurs. They are more hassle than useful. The one also has some ridiculous USSD verification that one has to go through every time one tries to access the app.

6) Preference to Prepaid
Most specials and reduced rates, data bundles, competitions, MTN Zone, and various other products are targeted specifically at Prepaid customers. Once a customer is locked in a contract, MTN don’t give a damn about them as long as they keep paying. I’ve been a contract customer for around 16 or so years and never felt I was considered more valued than a prepaid customer, which I should be. I can’t use the R200 value included in my contract to buy a data or sms bundle – I’m forced to pay out of bundle rates even when I have an airtime balance of R1000 or more.

7) SMS and Data costs
SMS texting should basically be free – it runs over a control channel and was never supposed to be a paid-for service. Out of bundle contract data prices are still very high on the MTN network. All data should be the same low price. In the United States I paid R400 for unlimited voice, text and data for a month.

8) Net Neutrality
MTN does not support Net Neutrality. I therefore prefer to be on an ad-hoc prepaid account to allow for easier migration to a more Net Neutral competitor should it become necessary.

Please be sure to credit my prepaid account with the remainder of my current airtime, data and sms balance when doing the migration. I have paid for the airtime. It is attached to this SIM/IMEI and I am entitled to it. A failure to do so could be in breach of the consumer protection act.

Regards
Shaun.

Categories
Computing Rants Technology

Collusion in ad-hoc mobile data bundle pricing?

The cellular networks seem to think we are all just as stupid as the government seems to think we are.

It is abundantly clear on these screen shots taken today from the Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C websites that they are either price-fixing or colluding, or deliberately being anti-competitive in their pricing for ad-hoc mobile data bundles. It must be more than coincidence they all arrive at the same prices for the same data volumes, yet each has a very different network infrastructure, backbone and peering configuration from the other.

I hate it when big corporates assume they are more intelligent than the consumer.

vodacom_data_bundles
mtn_data_bundles
cellc_data_bundle

Categories
Rants Technology

On the Gautrain getting Cellphone Coverage by 2014

Gautrain and the Gauteng transport MEC has announced that their 80km rail system will have end-to-end cellphone coverage by July 2014. TAT TA DADAA!

That’s not an announcement. That’s a fucking apology.

July 2014? Hello, it’s 2012 now. Their lame excuse is one of needing to test that the cellphone systems don’t interfere with the train systems or some kak. Now forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but those same cellphone systems and signals are already active in the air around the train when it is above ground. So are they saying the Gautrain control systems have never been tested in the vicinity of GSM/3G signal but they operate the train anyway? What a honky pile of crap.

The cellphone companies need to wake the fuck up. By not having coverage of the underground portions of the line they are just losing revenue. The Gautrain people need to wake up – it doesn’t take a year and a half to cover 80km of train tracks with cellular signal, most of which is above ground.

South Africa Technology Fail. Embarrassing. They have had this in Hong Kong since 1993.

MTN, CellC, Vodacom, 8ta, stop being so pathetic.

Categories
Computing Rants

To the National Consumer Commission RE: MTN unfair data billing

Dear Commissioner,

I believe that MTN are engaging in an unfair business practice with regards to the expiry policy of their Data Bundle products.
Data bundles loaded onto a contract cellular phone currently have a lifetime of 2 months in which they can be used. Once the two month period is complete, any remaining unused data expires.
While in general I do take issue with the entire concept of data that has already been paid for by a consumer being allowed to expire at all, this particular complaint is not in that regard.

I have an issue in the situation where multiple data bundles are active on a cellular phone at the same time, and the later expiring data is used *before* the soonest expiring data.
My situations is as follows:
In order not to overrun my data allowance and pay the ridiculous R2 per Megabyte out-of-bundle rate, somewhere around the 5th of the month I will purchase an add-on bundle.
On about the 20th of the month the billing cycle runs through and an additional contracted 150 Megabytes is added to my data allowance.
I end up with roughly as follows for my data balance:
+/- 772.56 MB expiring on 23/09
150 MB expiring on 21/10.
The problem is MTN then switch back the bundle usage to deduct from the data expiring in October first, rather than continuing to deduct from the data that will expire in September.
This leads to my longest lasting data being used up first, and my shorter lasting data often expiring unused.

This is a deliberate and unfair business practice designed to cheat the consumer of the product they have purchased.
I also believe there is universal merit to resolving this case for all consumers using cellphones in our country.

I hope you will have the time and inclination to take this up with cellphone operators, in particular MTN in my case.

Yours faithfully,

Shaun Dewberry.

Categories
Rants Technology

How Vodacom, MTN and Cell C make big money at our expense.

Cell site
Image via Wikipedia

I just came across an interesting article on the New York Times where Randall Stross decided to investigate the actual costs a text message has for a cellular network operator. Finally someone did the research I’d been too lazy to do for a while.

As I suspected, a text/sms message is basically free. They are sent to the nearest tower over a control channel – a channel that exists in order for the phone to communicate with the network, and so stuffing that channel with a message bears very little overhead, if any. This also explains the stupid 160 character limit that texts are subject to.

So yeah, another blatant rip-off. Go ahead, send your R10 messages to 35050 now!

[Article Link: New York Times]

[Update: A slightly more in-depth technical discussion by Tom Limoncelli at EverythingSysadmin.com]

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