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| Kampala, Uganda |
Kampala — the
growth that the telecommunication sector has gone through is the fastest Uganda
has seen in the past 15 years but the year 2012 has been a cautious year for
both the telecom companies and the subscribers.
Emerging
from the price wars of 2010 and 2011, which drastically brought the cost of
making a phone call to an all-time low of Ugsh180, later proved to be unsustainable
as all telecoms in unison raised it to Ugsh240.
The service
providers took on a guarded way of doing business preferring temporary
promotions to price cuts.
By
having almost a uniform tariff across the five major operators, users had an
easy job of choosing and remaining loyal to their network of choice.
Subscribers chose quality of service one was receiving and juicer promotions.
What is important
to note though is that telecoms failed to reach the desired benchmarks set by
the sector regulators, Uganda Communication Commission (UCC), some performed
well off than the others as it was indicated by the quarterly quality of
service performance reports.
Deceptive sector growth
Well as the
sector had its own challenges some stakeholders insist 2012 was a successful
year with general improvement. In an interview Mr. Fred Otunnu the head,
communications at UCC, the telecoms industry regulator, emphasized the good
year it has been.
"I
can say overall there was good performance registered, in terms of quality of
service there was improvement in some areas but of course in some areas there
was stagnation." Otunnu said acknowledging that services were not entirely
superb.
Uganda like its
neighbors in the East African region saw a variety of value added services put
on the market by the operators with mobile money as a service leading the pack
followed by increased mobile internet use.
"Traffic for
data continued to grow, reliability in data transmission continued to register
improvement albeit a few challenges of cable cuts along Kenya Uganda
route." Otunnu said.
Despite the
regulator being pleased with the sector growth some of the operators are not
satisfied with the outcome of their investment in the year 2012 compared to
previous years.
Eastafricanbusinessweek