MTN fined Rwf3m every day for poor services

Telecom sector regulator Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) has fined MTN Rwanda, the country’s largest telecom operator by market share, Rwf3 million per day due to poor services and network failure.RURA says the financial penalty is effective September 14, and will be applicable until the problem is fixed which is normally one month.“I know they are trying to fix it, but it has persisted since March this year and this is appropriate according to the policy,” Regis Gatarayiha, the Director General of RURA said during a news briefing yesterday at RURA head office. MTN subscribers, both mobile and internet users, have constantly appealed to the regulator, expressing their frustration at the operator’s network, which many say affected their daily businesses.Some of the poor services reported by subscribers include network failures, dropped calls, unclear calls and slow internet. The regulator warned that should MTN fail to fix the network in the period of one month, further regulatory measure will be taken accordingly.“Within its mandate and powers conferred to it by the Law N0 44/2001 governing communications, RURA decided to issue a confirmation enforcement notice and to impose a penalty to MTN Rwanda over persistently poor quality services,” a statement from RURA reads.Gatarayiha said MTN should prove the capacity manifested in their business plan presented to the regulator.RURA says its survey revealed that some of MTN service parameters were below minimum threshold in their license obligations.According to network performance survey, poor performance was mainly due to a significant number of call set up failures and abrupt call disconnections which resulted in frequent dropped calls.Previously MTN Rwanda explained that network failures were driven by their expansion program especially with its infrastructure to serve the increasing number of subscribers better, hence the reason for the current challenges.According to David Kezio Musoke, MTN’s Public relations since the enforcement notice from RURA on 1st March this year MTN Rwanda has made tremendous effort to improve and upgrade the network recording a growth of 300,000 as of August.“MTN Rwanda apologizes to all Rwandans for all inconveniences caused while we carry out continuous optimization processes to fine tune the upgrades while keeping our clients on-line,” a statement from MTN Rwanda reads.A similar survey also discovered that Tigo network did not meet license obligations on quality service during the period under review. An enforcement notice was also issued to Tigo to settle the problem of poor call set up success rate and a high call drop in its network however with no penalties.Data from RURA shows that as of July, this year, Airtel which recently joined the mobile telephony market has already accumulated 44,044 subscribers while its two main rivals, Tigo Rwanda and MTN Rwanda have 1,663,672 and 3,082,025 active mobile phone users, respectively.General mobile telephony penetration has reached 45 per cent, a trend that is believed to have opened up possible opportunities to enhance development.

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MTN fined Rwf3m every day for poor services