MTN Headquarters
The Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) has warned MTN Rwanda over continuously failing to improve services and given the telco up to the end of October in the City of Kigali and end of November in the rest of the country, to resolve all network related issues or risk more sanctions.
The decision of RURA board, dated August 19, followed a hearing session conducted on July 23, during which MTN acknowledged that “there is a gap between the improvement of the KPIs and the translation of these improvements into customer experience.”
RURA said that after examination of all information submitted and explanations given by MTN RWANDACELL PLC on the failure to meet the deadline of the remediation plan in order to improve the quality of service in the City of Kigali and upcountry districts, it was found that the telco failed to comply with regulatory obligations.
As a result, RURA issued an enforcement notice to MTN RWANDACELL PLC for non-compliance with the license and regulatory obligations.
“The Regulatory Board hereby issues an Enforcement Notice directing MTN RWANDACELL PLC to solve all network connection issues related to poor calls connections (first attempts failures), drop calls and Silent/Garbled-Speech Calls,”
RURA said that in additional to that, MTN RWANDACELL PLC must comply with the regulation N° 006/R/STD-QoS/ICT/RURA/2019 of 30/01/2019 governing the quality of service of cellular mobile networks services by 29th October 2021 in Kigali City and by 30th November 2021 in the rest of the country.
“Should these deadlines be exceeded, further regulatory sanctions, including the monetary sanction shall be applied immediately,” RURA said in a statement released Monday. The decisions take effect on the date of the signature.
The decision follows multitudes of complaints on social media, of people accusing MTN Rwanda of poor services, mostly on calls and internet, with many accusing the telco of poor service delivery.
In May 2017, RURA slapped MTN Rwanda with a Rwf7bn fine for breaching licensing obligations by hosting its IT services outside the country.
RURA at the time said MTN Rwanda Ltd provided services in contravention of Enforcement Notice and Directives issued by the regulator against hosting its IT services outside the country.
MTN Rwanda is the biggest telecom network in Rwanda in terms of subscribers, claiming 6,557,073 of Rwanda’s 10,614,408 Mobile telecom subscribers as of the March 2021 figures published by RURA.
