Flyertalk to the rescue! (I think)

Arrived in JNB airport late afternoon/early evening, powered up to iPhones (6s and 6s Plus). Network search for a good 10-15 mins and finally picked up on one of the networks (honestly can't recall which one). Once they grabbed a network - full signal bars ... nothing. No data access, web sites wouldn't load, apps said in substance "no network connection," iMessages would not go through (offered option to send as Text Message). However, I COULD make calls (back to USA and intra-South Africa).

Called T-Mo customer care and spoke with folks in Texas call centre. Helpful and they tried (reset network connections, toggle cellular data on-off, power off/on, etc) but nothing. They put in an escalation ticket and promised a call back within hours to see if anything was working and that ticket would be resolved within 72 hours.

Used an AT&T iPhone that was working to ask the Google for a solution. Saw a lot of sites discussing SIM-unlocked phones having issues with the insertion of new SIM post-SIM unlock. That's not me. Phones are new/fresh from T-Mo with T-Mo SIMs that had never been removed.

Flyertalk thread came up (perhaps this one, I was doing a lot of this on-the-fly while juggling about 6 other travel-related issues) and saw note about "reseting" phone by turning off while holding the home button. Also saw note to enter #RON# and/or #ROF# into phone dialer. Did that on both, toggling data off then back on with confirmation messages back from the phone.

That seemed to "do it" Data immediately began flowing, emails, incoming iMessages, outgoing/outbox messages dumped out and were now sent, etc.

I suspect that the #RON# #ROF# toggling took care of it rather than some magical action by T-Mo escalations. Indeed, the lack of a phone call or message back from T-Mo customer care indicates the ticket is still unresolved (i.e. they haven't "fixed" my problem).

Of concern was almost immediately ALSO started getting SMSs from T-Mo saying you've used $xx amount of international data roaming. I thought that I had perhaps toggled on the higher-cost "full-speed" data plan rather than just the slower "free" international roaming. Called T-Mo customer care back and spoke with fellow who told me that I was cool and that these messages were sometime sent in error but that I was good and on free data. He noted my account so that, if I get nailed with a huge international bill. Hold thumbs.