I just ran into the weirdest internet issue. I have the 5G unlimited internet package from Redbull Mobile. A few days ago I got a message telling me I’ve used up 90% of my bandwidth and today it stopped working. So I got in touch with RedBull Mobile to find out what was up.
Firstly for anyone considering Redbull Mobile you need to be aware they don’t have a call center. Your only option for support is chatting with someone. I tried to do that from within the App, but the person the live chat kept connecting me to wouldn’t respond. Like in 10 minutes he said 1 thing which was unrelated to what I was asking and then stopped replying. I tried closing chat and reopening and got the same person and no response. I usually hate talking to bots but this was actually one time I wished I was chatting to a bot instead of a person. At least bots respond. Eventually I tried live chat from the website and got someone.
Turns out unlimited really means only 3TB which I don’t know why they’re calling it unlimited then. Unlimited means no limited but whatever because looking back at my history the max I’ve ever hit is like 2.2TB a month. But for some reason this month I consumed 3TB already and I still have 10 days to go. I don’t know how, I need to check my Xbox and see if it downloaded anything without me realizing. I got a new phone so maybe downloading everything back to my phone consumed bandwidth but that would be like max 300GB. But all of this isn’t even the issue I have right now.
The problem is I don’t have a choice to add more bandwidth. Technically I do but it just doesn’t make sense. I asked support if I could recharge my internet by adding an additional 500GB or 1TB and turns out the only option I have is to add 50GB at a time and it costs 5KD for every 50GB. That is crazy expensive when I’m paying 10KD for 3TB a month. I can get a new pre-paid line with 500GB internet for 8KD which is actually what I’m going to do now. Going to use that line temporarily fro the next 10 days.
So weird, now I need to go and figure out what consumed so much bandwidth this month.
13 replies on “I have a weird internet issue”
yeah, i found that the hard way too several years ago…its something the sneak into the small print, related to fair usage policies which basically means: “Unlimited fair usage refers to an “unlimited” data plan that includes a Fair Usage Policy (FUP), which is a set of terms to ensure fair sharing of network resources among users. Once a user exceeds a certain threshold of high-speed data (which may be daily or monthly), their connection speed is reduced for the rest of the billing period or until the next cycle”
You can get an STC pre paid line for 5 KD with 600 GB
I have a zain locked router so has to be zain card.
I went to get the 500GB zain line but turned out it wasn’t prepaid. So I had to get a post paid line so I can cancel next week. The store guy told me the max i can get prepaid is 60GB for 6KD.
https://myzain.kw.zain.com/ shows 10TB for my Zain unlimited plan. I’ve never crossed 2TB per month though.
https://i.postimg.cc/wxbGnpFm/Zainbwlimit.jpg
Zain told me their unlimited plan is 11TB. Rebull’s unlimited plan is 3TB. I’ve never hit 3 or close to 3, so something is up at home. Just turned off auto updates on my Xbox in case that was the issue.
Yeah 3TB is like 100GB per day which is bizarre to be consuming on a daily basis even with auto updates enabled. Is there a way you can check the monthly data usage on your devices? I also recommended checking the connected devices list on your WiFi to make sure there’s nothing suspicious.
It’s actually 3TB in 20 days since I have 10 days left for it to reset. I’m thinking now maybe my daily WhatsApp backup is behind it. My WhatsApp is 78GB. But I’ve been backing up daily for years now. I turned on my NAS for the first time in a while. Maybe it was doing something in the background. Just turned it off now but should have checked to see if any background task was running.
Ok something is definitely up. Just logged into my router and it’s like my connection has been up for 4.7 hours and I’ve downloaded 96GB!
Ok, that’s a yuuuge whatsapp backup haha.
Unless your NAS for some reason backs up data to a cloud, it shouldn’t be an issue. But yeah, looks like one of your devices is doing something weird. You can kick them off the network one by one, monitor data usage and find the culprit. I use OPNsense at home and it can show my data usage stats per device, but im not sure the Huawei router can provide that information.
The Huwawei just does internet, I have another router to handle the networking and that one I can monitor traffic which now I’m going to keep checking
Are you mining any coins?
Nope and haven’t downloaded any torrents in like 5+ years. Literally only thing I do is stream 4K TV and that’s about it. I turned off Xbox once I setup new temporary internet earlier today and since something already consumed 92gb it wasn’t the Xbox. I shutoff the NAS now and gonna keep my eye on the network traffic and see if anything changes.
They say it’s unlimited but it really isn’t. It’s sort of like when a watch company says a watch is water proof, but in reality it’s only resistant to a certain amount of meters