There have been concerns that Vodacom airtime keeps disappearing despite turning off data. Tech blog My Broadband ran a series of tests to prove it is actually happening.
The tests involved four SIM cards placed on four similar smartphones while connected to Wifi.
The results were that Vodacom and Cell C SIM cards’ airtime decreased as the phones utilised Out of Bundle data usage.
Both organisations said the disappearance of the airtime resulted from Out Of Bundle data usage.
However, this data was attributed to “OS Services” and was also measured in equal or greater amounts on Telkom and MTN despite the airtime balance on these SIMs remaining constant.
The data was being lost by the connectivity to “connectivitycheck.gstatic.com” URL owned by Google though it was odd for only two networks to lose airtime despite all the four losing data to this URL.
The mobile data was turned off during the second test.
Airtime disappearing with mobile data turned off
Despite mobile data having been turned off, airtime continued to disappear from Vodacom and Cell C SIM cards.
The table below shows the airtime decline across all four SIMs over three days when mobile data was turned off and only Wi-Fi was turned on.
The My Data Usage application used to measure the data lose did not show any applications that used data during the period.
Vodacom responds
Asked for comment, Vodacom attributed the data loss to services provided by companies including Amazon, HP, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, China Telecom, and MIT.
The company said they are working with the service providers involved to resolve the problem.
Cell C did not respond to questions by Tech Blog My Broadband.
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Vodacom disappearing airtime is real – Here are the tests that prove it