The independent Quality of Service (QOS) assessment carried out by the Uganda Communications Commission, the country’s telco regulator indicates that MTN Uganda is the best network operator in the country.
The assesment carried out between February 2014 to June 2014 took into account parameters such as Successful Call rate, Blocked call rate and Dropped call rate among others.
MTN emerged the best beating Airtel, Orange, UTL due to what it says a continued focus on Network Quality, rollout of innovative Products and Services, improvement of Customer Experience and wide distribution network which have consolidated our leadership in quality service and delivery.
In just two years, MTN claims to have invested over Ushs 287 billion, part of its cumulative investment exceeding Ushs 1.7 Trillion in Uganda since 1998 for network rollout and upgrades as well as a number of other infrastructure developments to support our subscriber growth and the rollout of new innovative products and services. In the six months ended 30 June 2014, MTN Uganda added 133 new 2G sites and 138 new 3G sites. There were also 243 existent 2G sites upgraded in various locations across the country.
According to MTN Uganda’s Chief Executive Officer, Brian Gouldie,”“This is a fantastic achievement and reflects the results of our investment program and network optimization focus over the last few months. What is particularly pleasing is that we are the clear leader in important cities like Mbale, Jinja, Kasese, Kabale, Masaka and Mbarara. This is a clear indication that MTN has not only limited our investment to Kampala but has focused on the whole of Uganda.”
Last year, the telco officially commissioned its Fibre network at Katuna Border in Kabale district, the first terrestrial link to Rwanda aimed at lowering cost and mproving quality of communications services in the region and the world by connecting Uganda to an additional submarine cable SAT-3 to Rwanda via the Tanzania route from Dar es Salaam.
MTN Uganda says it has also connected to two other cables through Kenya for unique redundancy and act as a backup structure for secured and reliable connectivity as well as ensure quality voice and data services. By December 2013, MTN Uganda’s total Fibre infrastructure exceeded 3,200km. An additional 350 km of fibre will be rolled out by the end of 2014 and 150 km in the first quarter of 2015. MTN has over 3 million subscribers accessing Internet through its monthly.
“It is important to highlight the fact that network downtime usually results in significant revenue losses. We have however invested heavily in network infrastructure to minimize this down time so as to ensure that customers and their Businesses are never offline. Unfortunately, these efforts are being affected by persistent network damages along our routes”, he said.
However, MTN Uganda has been hard hit by vandalism. For instance during the last 12 months, MTN Uganda recorded more than 200 incidents of infrastructure vandalism largely attributed to the theft of fiber cables by individuals and activities of road construction.
