Uganda’s telecommunications regulator and watchdog, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), has condemned the poor services given to users across the country in a statement after it conducted a survey of telecommunications services in the East African country.
The survey in eight large towns said that a major cause of the poor services was the result of “vandalism.”
The town of Kasese experienced better mobile phone services than its counterparts, the study said.
“The other towns were Jinja, Mbarara, Masaka and Mbale. The survey was conducted between July and October 2012,” it announced.
The UCC said “MTN lost 543 hours across the country between July and October. Of these, 183 hours were lost due to fiber cuts by unknown individuals while 132 hours of MTN service delivery were affected by road works.
“Airtel reported isolated incidents of network outages which included vandalism in Kalisizo. Consequently, 19 sites in the area surrounding Masaka town were affected. The operator also suffered a major outage in the eastern region due to maintenance of fiber optic cables by UETCL,” the UCC statement continued.
Mobile service has been a major part of the development of Uganda’s infrastructure over the past two years and the regulator hopes that more stringent efforts to crackdown on vandals will help boost services to rural users across the country.
Mohammed Awad
