How to set up “unrestricted” APN on Telkom LTE / 3G

You most likely ended here because you were frustrated by your Internet Service Provider, Telkom in South Africa. Waking up to find many of your connection ports but blocked as well as other protocols (UDP, TCP, SSH and an FTP that initiates but gets a time out) is not fun.

Furthermore, having Google asks every now and then if you are a robot can also quickly become annoying.

Luckily, there is a workaround and it’s very simple, simply follow the steps below:

1. The first step is to log in to your Telkom Router: http://192.168.8.1 (or your router IP address if using a custom router)
2. Go to “Settings > Dial-up”
3. And then “Profile Management”
4. The old profile name will be TelkomSA and will be set as the default. You then need to create a new profile with the following details:
   Profile name: unrestricted
   IP type: IPv4
   APN: unrestricted
   And then leave the rest of the fields blank.
5. Save and set the new “Unrestricted APN” profile as your default profile. The noticeable change when connecting to the internet is your our IP address will change from 197.x.x.x to 41.x.x.x

Please note that the settings work on any device that you use to login to the internet, so your WiFi router or mobile device can be configured to work with the new profile settings.