Dear Student,

We know that some students have been experiencing problems connecting to the UP Connect portal during tests and exams. The University has taken note of your concerns and negotiated with the country’s major telecommunications providers, including Vodacom, MTN, Telkom and Cell C, to provide 20GB (10GB any time + 10GB night-time) of data per student, to be used for tests and examinations. To access other UP-related content, students should continue to use UP Connect to ensure you don’t incur any data costs.

If you happen to be in the fortunate position of already having access to adequate data through your home wi-fi, etc. please consider not requesting the data bundle.

The University will purchase the data on behalf of students who have updated their details on the self-service student portal. The data bundle is valid for 30 days from activation. In order to qualify for the data offer, you are required to update your details, including the mobile number to which the data is to be added, as soon as possible, but before 29 May 2020.

To do so, please:

• Either:
  • Log on via connect.up.ac.za. Select the icon labelled www.up.ac.za. Select the “My UP Login” link to log onto the UP Portal, or
  • Go directly to www.up.ac.za. Select the “My UP Login” link to log onto the UP Portal.
• From the portlets available to you in the UP Portal, click on the (green) “GO” button associated with the portlet titled “Student Centre”.
• Ensure that you land on, or navigate to, the (default) collection of tiles labelled “UP Student Self-Service”.
• Locate and click on the new “tile” labelled “Data Bundle”.

On this function you will be asked to:

• Clarify to which mobile service provider the mobile number to which you want this data bundle loaded is linked (namely Cell C, MTN, Telkom or Vodacom).
• Specify the last 9 digits of the mobile number to which you want the data bundle sent.
• Confirm whether the number that you specified to receive the data bundle is also your normal contact mobile/cellular number on which UP can call or SMS you.
• Submit.

UP will periodically combine all the data bundle requests received from students, and will forward this information to the respective mobile operators for them to arrange for the loading of these data bundles. So there will be lag time between your request and the data bundle being made available to you.

This data bundle download facility is not available to persons who are either “Study Applicants” i.e. persons who are not yet enrolled at UP, or students who are enrolled on any of UP’s Online Study programmes. Furthermore, data bundles cannot be requested for SIM cards not issued by one of the above-mentioned mobile operators – even if it is a non-SA SIM card that is connected via “roaming” to one of these mobile operators.

If you experience any problems please contact the IT help desk at [email protected] / 012 420 3051 between 07:00  and 16:30. A standby service is available from 16:30 to 22:00.