Olleh Rwanda Networks (ORN) has announced a 30 per cent reduction in prices for 4G internet.

ORN is the country’s wholesale distributor for 4G internet, with Telecom Companies being their main clients.

The move is expected to bring down the cost of high speed internet in the country and consequently boost the uptake of 4G mobile phone subscribers.

During a media briefing dubbed "the 4G LTE Media Day”, on Tuesday, the company announced that the 30 per cent reduction covers all existing data packages.

Patrick Yoon, Chief Executive of ORN said the new changes are part of the efforts to bring affordable services to Rwandans, but more importantly to position Rwanda as the leading country in rolling out broadband network in the region.

"We have always been promising the government of Rwanda to expand our networks to the rest of the country and also cover 95 percent of the population. I think the achievement has been quite bigger from the time we started operating and our responsibility is to connect all Rwandans by the end of 2017,” Yoon said.

"For the last two years, we have been able to roll out 4G LTE to 32 percent of the population within 27 districts, and we are expecting to close this year with 62 percent of the population connected to the broadband network.”

Yoon explained that the revised prices and the new products have been set following consistent requests by both retailers and the public to make 4G more affordable.

"We are glad to communicate that the suggestions were taken into consideration and today the revised offers to retailers are unveiled publically. Furthermore, new products are introduced to satisfy specific needs raised by the customers. As a wholesale provider of 4G LTE services and considering ORN’s limitations in determining retail prices, we believe the new prices will cascade further to create more value to the end customer,” he noted.

The Tuesday event was also an opportunity for the company to launch its new product dubbed ‘VPN over LTE’, a new tailored solution for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), looking at connecting multiple branches to their headquarters, using LTE network. This solution was previously provided by ORN only on Fibre.

"The Virtual Private Network over LTE solution will supplement the existing fibre based fixed broadband services, especially for SMEs who would find it hard to afford the fibre installation costs,” noted Desire Ngabo, the Chief Strategy Officer.

Ngabo explained that SMEs have not been able to benefit much from the broadband network that they have been rolling out because most of the time they were required to use fibre which involved a number of processes that are sometimes costly and time consuming.

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