MTN Demands For Fair Treatment From UCC

MTN CEO Brian speaking to Journalists yesterday

MTN Uganda, the largest telecom company in the country has demanded for equitable treatment of all players in the telecom sector by the regulator UCC.

MTN CEO Brian  speaking to Journalists yesterday
MTN CEO Brian speaking to Journalists yesterday

During a press briefing Wednesday afternoon at Nyonyi gardens , the telecom CEO Brian Gouldie told reporters that while MTN is meeting its tax obligations, the other players are not.

He said as a leading tax payer, the company is very focused on meeting its licence obligations.

“Every single month MTN pays for frequency,  and  we have been renting that space from the regulators, but why are operators not paying monthly licenses not treated the same way, suspend their licences,” Gouldie said.

He demanded for fairness and objectiveness. He said there are number of operators who dominate international traffic illegally while the regulator Uganda Communication Commission watches on.

He said Uganda loses money to players who come and carry out such illegal connections.
On the other hand he revealed that the company had refunded all lost data bundles due to multiple loading.

“In reality MTN did not take away money but due to system logic failure, customers were allowed to log more than one request and once the system  normalized, they were credited multiple bundles which in some cases depleted their airtime wallets, as a business  we find it unfair to retain the earnings in error hence the rebate,” he said.

Gouldie reported that MTN has proactively rebated all affected customers to a tune of Ugx  778m of lost airtime.

He pledged that the company would continue to identify, verify and refund all other similar issues on a case by case basis.

According to Gouldie, between 30th June and 16th October 2014, 203, 798 incidents were reported and another 156,803 were identified for the period Oct 17th to Nov. 17th bringing the total number of complaints to 360,893 all of which have been verified and rebated.

“MTN has put in place measures to prioritize all data related complaints by attending to related incidents with the highest priority. We acknowledge that in world that is now very dependent on the Internet for new and day to day living, it’s extremely important that service interruptions are avoided as much as possible,”  he said .

MTN has in addition committed more resources to fast track the resolution of data complaints. A new twitter handle, www.twitter.com/MTNUgcare has been commissioned to solely focus on resolving customer related queries.

All other customer contact points including the 126 toll free data helpline, the Facebook page www.facebook.com/MTNUg and 16 walk in service centres spread across Uganda, 9 of which are in Kampala alone will continue to prioritize all data complaints and provide timely resolutions.

“At MTN, we value the trust the customers have put in our products and services and will stop at nothing to ensure that trust is never betrayed”, Gouldie said.

He added that despite the temporary challenges that the brand has experienced with its mobile data solution, MTN remains committed to pioneering tailored solutions that address customer’s needs, in both a responsible but sustainable manner.

He revealed that the company has embarked on Content Management Solution (CMS) to address spamming and unexplained charges for subscriptions services

CMS provides features that will enable MTN customers to accept or stop promotional SMS messages and subscription alerts of various information like current news and sports news, relationship/love tips and service updates among others.

“It’s a top business priority for MTN to focus on driving a positive customer experience across all our services & product portfolios,” said

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