How to fix Telkom LTE USSD timing out

I live in Pretoria. I moved here last year a few days before the first national lockdown to be closer to the family because no one really knew what was happening with the whole COVID19 shiznit. I chose to be close to family and friends, abandoning chilled Cape Town.

Pretoria is notorious for incompetence, so things like power outages, water problems, home affairs attitude, corruption, no internet, hot beers, etc are the things you have to deal with on a daily basis.

Telkom is also headquartered in Pretoria — I’ll let you do the maths.

For my backup connection, I use Telkom and I only buy LTE bundles which work out to be cheaper and the connection is *slightly faster than the 3G connection.
*(slightly where I live, I know it can be a lot “faster” elsewhere… cough… cough).

Anyways, I noticed that I couldn’t send a USSD to check my balance or usage from my Huawei router and I thought I’d share this with you in case you’re struggling with getting your balance/usage… it has nothing to do with living in Pretoria. Lol.

Solution

Your Network Settings on your router MUST be set to Auto or 3G as the USSD goes out on 3G and not 4G