New disappearing airtime and data testing by MyBroadband Insights revealed that Vodacom and Cell C are suffering from disappearing data. The testing, conducted over two weeks in January 2022, used four identical Nokia 5 smartphones with the latest updates to ensure an equal testing environment for all operators.
We switched off mobile data and connected the phones to a stable Wi-Fi Internet connection throughout the testing period. VoLTE and data roaming were also switched off.
All software updates were disabled, and all the apps on the phones were individually denied mobile network access. Before we started the testing, we checked all the SIMs to ensure there were no active WASP services on the accounts which could consume airtime or data.
The phones were kept in the same office, and only USSD balance checks were performed to check data and airtime.
My Data Manager was also installed to have a second opinion on data used during the test.
The testing did not detect any disappearing airtime on South African mobile operators.
There were, however, two operators which experienced disappearing data – Vodacom and Cell C.
Over the two-week testing period, the Vodacom SIM lost 0.26MB while the Cell C SIM lost 0.615MB.
While this is not a lot of data, it is concerning compared to MTN and Telkom, where no data was lost.
Cell C chief technology officer Schalk Visser has previously explained that Android smartphones may use mobile data while connected to an LTE network even when the connection is disabled.
“Under the 3GPP LTE standards, data traffic is possible across the 4G mobile network even when the ‘mobile data’ setting is turned off,” Visser said.
MyBroadband asked Vodacom for comment, but the company did not respond by the time of publication.
Testing results
The table below provides an overview of MyBroadband Insights’ disappearing airtime and data tests.
| Disappearing Data | ||||||||
| Network | Starting Airtime | Starting Data | Ending Airtime | Ending Data | Airtime Used | Data Used | ||
| Telkom | R32.00 | 110.000 MB | R32.00 | 110.000 MB | R0.00 | 0.000 MB | ||
| MTN | R12.00 | 100.000 MB | R12.00 | 100.000 MB | R0.00 | 0.000 MB | ||
| Vodacom | R17.56 | 50.000 MB | R17.56 | 49.740 MB | R0.00 | 0.026 MB | ||
| Cell C | R5.17 | 100.325 MB | R5.17 | 99.710 MB | R0.00 | 0.615 MB | ||
Source: mybroadband
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