MTN Responds to RURA Penalties on Network Failure

MTN Rwanda acknowledges receiving an Enforcement Notice issued on 1st March 2012 and a letter confirming this Enforcement Notice and imposing penalties on Tuesday 18th September 2012 from the Board of Directors of Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Agency (RURA.)

•As communicated in the notice, RURA performed a Quality of Service test in August 2012 on the MTN Rwanda network and the enforcement notice is on the basis of RURA’s finding using their methodology. Unfortunately, this was during the time that MTN was carrying out optimization on the network.

•In September, using independent technical teams including leading providers like Ericsson, MTN Rwanda also performed tests on our network and our findings indicate that despite hitches that sometimes might be beyond our control like fiber cuts, our network is operating within all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in our license obligations.

•During today’s press conference called by RURA, the Regulator acknowledged that though there is need for improvement MTN Rwanda has made high investments to upgrade and improve on service delivery and that our network is adequate to handle its capacities.

•Since the enforcement notice from RURA on 1st March this year MTN Rwanda has made tremendous effort to improve and upgrade the network and we have since received positive growth as indicated in the figures below.

•As of August 2012, MTN is servicing over 3.2 million customers – a growth of close to 300,000 subscribers since the beginning of the year.

•MTN Rwanda would like to point out that network upgrades are a continuous process and despite having deployed the first GSM networks in the country, over a decade ago, we shall continue upgrading to the latest available technologies to effectively serve our growing subscriber base.

•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.

•As we celebrate our 14th anniversary since we started operations in Rwanda we pledge to scale-up our capacity, continue modernizing our network to ensure that we meet the expectations of our customers now and in the future.