I’m aware that there is a more appropriate cousin-site to ask the question at, but I’m not a fan of the millions of people piping up and chipping in, so I’d rather ask here, in a more sedate environment first.
I’m currently using Telkom LTE. I’m not getting brilliant speeds, typically 15-18MBps on speedtest, but rarely over 5MBps in real life conditions.
I thought I could try MTN’s LTE offering, but specifically via MTN for now. I’m just trying to do it quickly and easily without waiting the 7-10 business days for delivery that all the ISP’s are offering.
So calling the local MTN store told me that there are no month-to-month SIM only deals for LTE. The lady suggested that I get a prepaid SIM and use that for testing, which led to my question that she couldn’t answer:
Will my experience on the MTN network using the prepaid sim be identical to what I can expect from the LTE contract sim, likely through Afrihost or Axxess?
Longest answer: It’ll give you a good indication, but it isn’t a perfect test. Afrihost/Axxess run on an enterprise APN of some kind, and so you don’t get the “raw” performance of the MTN network. It will at least give you an indication of what coverage to expect and what the peak speed is that you should expect.
So to get the proper test done, I should just bite the bullet and order and Afrihost sim and wait out the 10 days. I knew that there was some band and/or APN jiggery between LTE and prepaid and MTN and non-MTN, which is exactly why I posed the question, so your answer confirms that a) I was thinking along the correct lines and b) I need to do it the proper way, not the quick way.