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| MTN Rwanda |
KIGALI: Rwanda's
telecoms regulator said it would fine the country's unit of South African
telecommunications group MTN for the second time in four years for poor quality
service.
MTN Rwanda
is the by far the country's largest mobile phone operator with about two thirds
of its subscribers. The regulator on Thursday said it had carried out a survey
in August showing MTN had failed to meet minimum thresholds on call completion
rate, speech quality, signal strength and other measures, the regulator said.
MTN said independent
technical teams had carried out another survey of its Rwandan networks the
following month and found no major problems. The September survey found that
"despite hitches that sometimes might be beyond our control like fibre
cuts, our network is operating within all Key Performance Indicators in our license
obligations," MTN said.
MTN will
be fined 3,000,000 Rwandan francs for each day in which they do not comply with
the notice, for a maximum of one month, the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency
(RURA) said in a statement. It warned of further unspecified actions should MTN
fail to improve its services.
Johannesburg-based
MTN, which owns 80 percent of the Rwandan operation, said it has been trying to
improve its services since receiving an initial warning by the regulator in
March this year.
In 2009, the
regulator fined MTN Rwanda $140,000, saying it had failed to roll out network
upgrades or address problems such as dropped calls. The telecoms regulator also
issued a warning, but no fine, for poor service to MTN's rival Tigo Rwanda
owned by Millicom International Cellular, giving it one month to improve some
of its services found in a survey to be wanting. RURA figures showed MTN had
about 3.1 million out of the country's 4.9 million subscribers in July
Reuters