Living Without Unlimited Internet Sucks: it has been 3 days of pain

“Here we go again”, I thought, on Wednesday, when our unlimited home internet service suddenly stopped connecting. Brief periods of break in connectivity are not an unknown thing to anyone who uses these services in Nigeria. After some minutes, perhaps even with a buzz to the ISP, and things would be okay again. I had no idea that I would go without unlimited internet for days.

A quick look at the router where it sat and I saw that the LED light that indicates the status of the connection was blinking red. I did a quick intervention at my end by switching the router off and back on again. You know the almighty gadget restart is the first aid move in the world of connected devices. Always try a restart first.

The restart did not fix the problem. The light kept blinking red after the router woke up from the nap that I forced it to go on. This definitely required me to reach out to customer support and I did. I fired a short message to them and they responded with this:

Good afternoon,We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience Please kindly bear with us as we are currently investigating to get the issue resolved, thank you.

Aiit. A standard response. I was hopeful. In the meantime, I had MTN 5G Internet to fall back on. In some minutes, the home internet would be back and I wouldn’t have to worry about how much data I was guzzling on MTN any more.

3 days downtime and counting

But a few minutes turned into hours and into a day and now three days. In between that time, our ISP notified us that there had been major damage done to their infrastructure along our route and that they were working on it. From the chain of mails they sent out, they had to purchase some new materials in order to fix the damage.

They have been excellent with keeping is abreast of what is going on and I am hopeful that within another 24 hours at the most, this downtime will end. In the meantime, I have had to limit what I do on the Internet because every bit of consumption now counts in cash.

MTN Data to the rescue

My MTN Internet subscription has been bearing the brunt of my online activities. And it is uncomfortable because it is not unlimited. A 15GB data plan is almost halfway gone in two days. That’s a plan I would use for a month, because the bulk of my data consumption was on the home unlimited plan.

I am a stickler for stats, so I check the details of our unlimited plan often. Last month, we used over 600GB of data on that service. That is at least 20GB per day. Why exactly am I flustered that I have almost expended 15GB data on MTN in the last two days?

They say you don’t know what you have until you lose it. I don’t believe that. I knew what I had with the home unlimited Internet service. I monitored usage every month and knew the benefits of not having to worry about data consumption. So, I knew. Perhaps that saying applies to some other people and other scenarios, but not me and not this one.

From the first time I experienced unlimited internet years ago, I knew that I never wanted to go back to depending on regular data plans where I had to pay as I go. I don’t ever want to do without unlimited Internet again.

MTN 5G free data!

In an interesting turn of events, that free 50GB 5G data from MTN that I talked about some days ago came in handy yesterday. At 5.03pm, I got an SMS from the Y’hellow telco. It read:

Yello! Enjoy 1 hour of free browsing on MTN 5G from 5pm – 10pm in this location. Your 5G Happy Hour Starts Now!

I had a 5-hour window to use up to 50GB for one hour, but I didn’t have any major work to do then and had no serious downloads or uploads to carry out. Bummer. Then I remembered that Mrs. Mo and I hadn’t watched television in days because of the internet service downtime. We had ditched terrestrial TV some years back and we’re now 100% internet TV people in our home, so with the unlimited service gone, the TV was getting a well deserved break.

But here was 50GB awoof sitting in on my MTN account doing nothing. Quickly, I turned on the hotspot on my phone, connected the TV to it, found a good movie for us to enjoy together and sat down. We must use this freebie, by fire or by force!

MTN 5G comported itself well, delivering blistering speeds in the range of 450Mbps (I ran speed tests) and high resolution video. We were about 50 minutes into the movie when I got another SMS from MTN saying:

You have exhausted your 1hr free browsing on 5G. Dial *312*1# or click on https://mtnapp.page.link/tfRD to buy a new plan.

Yes, we could not finish the movie in one hour. One hour is a short time for a movie. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted. How many GB did we use? I don’t know, but I am sure we didn’t finish the whole 50GB. It would be nice to have a way of seeing usage stats of this freebie.

MTN, can you make this freebie 2 hours instead of one? It would be nice to be able to watch a movie from beginning to end on your freebie. Yes, I am asking. Ain’t we all Oliver Twist?

In the meantime, I can’t wait for our ISP to be done fixing this fault. I am tired of living without unlimited Internet.

PS: If interested in the unlimited life, check out our various informative guides on unlimited home internet.

Conclusion: On the 4th day after the service outage began, service on our home fibre Internet connection was restored. What a ride it has been, and am I so glad to have unlimited data once again. Toodles!

Author: Mister Mobility

Mister Mobility, a techie with a passion for storytelling. I have owned, used, and reviewed hundreds of mobile phones since 2001. I started Mobility Nigeria Tech Blog in 2008.