Residents decry high service costs on MTN mobile network

“…How can my telephone automatically order for a service without my knowledge,” said Lazarus. “

By Winnie Cirino

Some residents of South Sudan have accused the South African based MTN telecommunication mobile company of overcharging customers while offering what some clients call poor phone and internet service. Some residents said they feel they are not getting value for their money, 

Henry Nkemakolam, who is based in Magwi County of Eastern Equatoria state said he frequently uses MTN to stay in touch with relatives in his home country but warns using MTN can be very expensive. 

“MTN South Sudan is extremely exorbitant for average South Sudanese, let alone for us who are foreigners, for instance 250 Megabytes is at 700 SSP, 500 MB [at] 1,400 SSP, 1 Giga [at] 2,550 SSP, now the worst and painful aspect of it all, is that when you do this subscription, they don’t endure, you can never make subscription and use it for over 3 weeks, let alone 1 week, and these subscriptions are supposed to last for a month.”

“Would you believe if I tell you in a month, I have made 2Gig subscription 3 different times in a month?” said Nkemakolam.

While he often uses his MTN internet bundles for Facebook, reading online newspapers and WhatsApp, Nkemakolam said buying airtime to make calls is not cheap. 

“This so called Yello Sunday 100 Megabytes, MTN South Sudan free megabytes they give, is a big scam, once you activate it, in the next 30 minutes it’s gone, so more less they give you with right hand and they collect with left hand.”

“It’s just fraudulence and all this is happening because MTN has monopolized the communication market in South Sudan. I wish there were competition. MTN would have been dumped by many people, myself would have been number one, it is so frustrating,” said Nkemakolam.

Juba town resident Ochan Anthony uses telecom companies to communicate and work from home. Anthony said his biggest problem with MTN is how they charge customers like him. 

“The rates have been so, so high and purchasing internet is really expensive, some people don’t afford it, and for those who can afford still they have to spend a lot of money they could have spent in other necessities.”

 “To me, it has been the cost but secondly, it has been the cheating, for instance, MTN, you charge bundles, you don’t even use it, the next time you are getting an alert that your internet is done, sometimes before you even open your data after subscribing to a bundle, you find its gone, you have to subscribe again,” Ochan complained.

Ochan said MTN offers poor services and said the reason they get away with it is because they are a monopoly in South Sudan. He called on the government to regulate telecom companies and to encourage more investors to join the mobile phone industry. 

Juba resident Ochan Lazarus said telecom companies in South Sudan often hike prices at their own will. He said MTN even charges customers for automated messages sent to clients. 

“I remember in February I had loaded 500 pounds, when I called my Uncle in Torit, shortly I received an SMS saying I should recharge my account. I had talked for about 3 minutes and everything was cleared, so I didn’t understand what went wrong, they couldn’t even explain to me when I called them, they said, ‘you have ordered for a certain service here, so the money has gone for it.’ I said, how can my telephone automatically order for a service without my knowledge,” said Lazarus. 

Juba resident Akana Richard said since Vivacell telephone company was closed in 2018, he had not enjoyed making calls or using internet bundles. He said MTN and mobile phone company Zain have done very little to satisfy their customers in Juba. 

“They need to invest in infrastructure which is hard and expensive but that’s the only way while the government has to reduce on taxes or even give them tax holidays, that will be a support to make change, to make more development on it,” said Akana. 

Richard said telecom companies operating in South Sudan should invest in the infrastructure and expand to handle big number of subscribers. 

MTN was given repeated opportunities to comment on the complaints from customers but the company declined and instead asked for the telephone numbers of the customers who complained about the services of MTN. 

In January 2019, 101 South Sudanese civil organizations petitioned the government of South Sudan over what activists called insufficiencies of telecom companies operating in South Sudan.  Well, earlier this week President Salva Kiir presided over the launch of a new Telcom network service, Digitel.