cost of doing business.

Starting Saturday, MTN will charge Shs4 per second from Shs2 per second or Shs240 per minute for calls across all networks. Before the increase, MTN customers paid Shs3 per second across other networks.

The move could mark an end to the low call rates that Ugandans have enjoyed in the past eight months.

Early this year, telecommunication companies reduced their tariffs by more than 50 per cent as local calls fell to as low as Shs1 per second while international calls cost about Shs200 per minute.

MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer Mr Themba Khumalo, said that over the past couple of months, the telecommunications sector has been struggling as a result of the steady increase in input costs hence the need to raise tariffs.

“It has become very expensive to do business in Uganda especially over the past few months particularly with the depreciation of the Ugandan Shilling by over 20 per cent,” Mr Khumalo said.

Ensuring efficiency
He added: “The new tariffs will enable us to offset these costs and in so doing ensure that the business is able to be run in a more cost efficient and sustainable way, which provides more reliability of service for our subscribers.”

Mr Khumalo said that the new tariffs will help support the company’s investments in Uganda and ensure that customers enjoy the best telecommunication experience.

“Over the last thirteen years MTN’s investments of more than $1billion were supporting network infrastructure for close to eight million subscribers. MTN is investing a further $100million into the network this year. These new rates will maintain an increment in our investments in Uganda. Our customers will in the long run gain from this”.

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text19915 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This article originally appeared int he Daily monitor.