Students at the University of South Africa (Unisa) who are expecting to receive their free data for the exam season may have experienced some issues and delays in this regard.

Near the end of April the university outlined steps for students to receive this data which started rolling out earlier this week, but this may not have happened yet depending on which mobile carrier a student is using.

“The upcoming May to June 2022 online exams is due to start on 13 May 2022. Data (10GB anytime and 20GB night-time) for CellC, Vodacom and MTN users were loaded on 3 May 2022. Telkom data will be loaded on Friday, 6 May 2022 in line with Telkom standard operation procedures. We are aware of some technical challenges where some Vodacom students’ data load was affected, the Vodacom team is prioritising those issues to ensure a speedy resolution,” an update reads.

As today is 6th May it will be interesting to see if students get their allotted data as we go into the weekend.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only hiccup as those affected can’t even call the university for help.

“Please note that we are currently unable to respond to telephone queries. We encourage all students who may have data queries to email dataqueries[AT]unisa[DOT]ac[DOT]za,” the update continues.

Unisa has a long history of problems with its communication with student calls and emails being left unanswered. This problem, combined with assignment issues, lead to the infamous “UselessUNISA” trending hashtag on Twitter back in May 2021.

We’re not sure why telephone queries are impossible at this time but hopefully the provided email address is at least seen to. It’s not uncommon for queries over email to be left unanswered for weeks or even months at a time, which would be detrimental with the aforementioned exam season starting so soon.