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Med Kimbugwe.
By exactly 2:30PM yesterday (3rd December 2014), members of the media were already at the new MTN Business Center located at Nyonyi Gardens, Kololo eager to engage the MTN CEO and his leadership team on several issues that have received a lot of publicity in the past month.
Honestly, I for one was burning with questions and concerns; and couldn’t wait for CEO Brian Gouldie to finish delivering his statement. You know, it is always better to table your questions and concerns to the relevant parties instead of hating and spreading unsubstantiated information from wherever you are.
In a straight forward manner, the CEO expressed concern about the multiple bundle activations and reiterated the determination by MTN Uganda’s leadership to resolve this issue once and for all.
“We identified a logic problem between 30th June to 16th Oct and between 17th October to 17th November. A total of 360,893 data instability incidents were identified, verified and refunded. The customers that were affected by the data instability represent about 10% of MTN’s total data subscribers currently standing above 3.4 million.” CEO Brian noted.
This was the second time in the past 3 weeks that MTN was coming out to give its position on the whole data instability issue. And for this, they need to be credited as it is almost unheard of in these economies for brands to go public on such issues.
MTN has proactively rebated all affected customers to a tune of Ushs. 778,102,469 worth of airtime and Ushs. 213,729,050 worth of goodwill data bundles disbursements. The company says that it will continue to identify, verify and refund all similar issues on a case by case basis.
Brian noted that compensation was for all affected customers, since it is very easy to identify which customer lost airtime and how much.
By the end of the day, the whole picture was clear in a number of ways.
First and foremost, the technical glitches did not in any way ‘snatch’ the data customers’ airtime. They only caused inconvenience, since customers would get multiple bundle activations hence paying more money.
Secondly, compensation has been made and continues to be made as long as more cases are identified and verified.
Finally, the leadership of MTN Uganda is genuinely dedicated to solving this data issue and very soon, customers will continue to enjoy stable and world class Internet without interference, as well as the first class services that MTN Uganda has always provided.
