MTN Rwanda, the largest telecom company by market share, has invested over $2 million (Rwf1.3 billion) in attaining the MTN Zone technology.

This was announced by the company’s CEO, Khaled Mikkawi during the commercial launch of the new product yesterday at the company’s headquarters.

MTN Zone technology is the latest technology that is provided by Ericsson Company, it is designed to allow callers make big savings in areas where there is low network utilisation.

According to Mikkawi, MTN has been working with Ericsson for a long period to acquire the technology. With the launch of this technology the telecom company says it is targeting 20,000 subscribers from the commercial launch.

"The technology we acquired from Ericsson includes hardware, software and license which justifies the money invested. We first tested the technology back in April, in Huye Town former Butare District for two months,” Mikkawi explained.

The CEO also revealed that the telecom subscribers increased by 300,000 in a period of three months bringing the current numbers to 1.6 million subscribers.

"With the launch of the new products, we are targeting 200,000 subscribers to make it 1.8 million by the end of the year and we are targeting to have 50 percent share of the 6 million mobile subscribers that is targeted by RURA in 2012,” he revealed.

However, the MTN Group report ending June this year says that MTN Rwanda had 1.2 million subscribers by the end of June.

Mikkawi also said that MTN Zone is a Group’s policy and strategy, it was commercially launched in South Africa in 2008 and in other countries like Uganda, and it is doesn’t matter what time of the day to have a big or small percentage of reduction.

The officials also said that the product is there to stay depending how the customers respond on it and they are targeting 50 percent of their subscribers to use the services.

"The service is going to be there and if the service provider upgrades the technology we will also upgrade and a subscriber is free to use the service or not,” the CEO added. 

The technology was co-developed by MTN South Africa and Ericsson, a leading provider of telecommunication and data communication systems.

Ericsson handles all MTN networks in Africa and Middle East; it is also in charge of TIGO, the Third licensed Telecom Company set to start its operations in November.

MTN Zone which is provided by the Dynamic Discount Solution is a charging solution that is able to offer a mobile network customer a discount based on the amount of capacity available at their current location in the network.

The software looks at the GSM radio network from where the customer is calling and assesses the amount of capacity available in the network.

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