Business
MTN to compensate for data, airtime linked to network outage
"One of the decisions that we took as a leadership and management team yesterday is that we will compensate all customers whose balances on their voice and data bundles expired because they were not able to use them during the outage,” Mulinge said.
Speaking at a press briefing at their headquarters in Kampala on July 7, MTN chief executive officer Sylvia Mulinge said the outage was caused by a power failure at one of its data centres, which then affected other connected services.
By: Ali Twaha, Journalist @New Vision
KAMPALA - MTN has apologised to its customers over a weekend network outage that disrupted voice, data, mobile money, and mobile learning services.
The telecom firm has promised to compensate everyone whose airtime or data bundles expired during the disruption.
Speaking at a press briefing at their headquarters in Kampala on July 7, MTN chief executive officer Sylvia Mulinge said the outage was caused by a power failure at one of its data centres, which then affected other connected services.
“I really want to first of all start off by saying we are sorry to all our customers and everyone who was impacted. I have received numerous messages, either from calls or from people that I have interacted with, who indicated that many of them had been greatly inconvenienced because of the service interruption that we had,” Mulinge said.
“We do sincerely apologise for the service interruption. It was not expected. It was restored as quickly as our engineers could get the service up.”
She said both the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Bank of Uganda, and other stakeholders were kept updated as the company worked to resolve the problem.
She said the company had decided, as management, to compensate every customer whose voice or data bundle expired because they could not use it during the outage.
"One of the decisions that we took as a leadership and management team yesterday is that we will compensate all customers whose balances on their voice and data bundles expired because they were not able to use them during the outage,” Mulinge said.
“We do sincerely apologise for the service interruption. It was not expected. It was restored as quickly as our engineers could get the service up.”
She said both the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Bank of Uganda, and other stakeholders were kept updated as the company worked to resolve the problem.
She said the company had decided, as management, to compensate every customer whose voice or data bundle expired because they could not use it during the outage.
"One of the decisions that we took as a leadership and management team yesterday is that we will compensate all customers whose balances on their voice and data bundles expired because they were not able to use them during the outage,” Mulinge said.
“As of this morning (July 7), we have ensured that everyone who had a balance that was not able to be used, and ended up expiring, we compensate them.” MTN invested over sh594b in its network in 2025 alone.
Customer funds were never affected
MTN Mobile Money managing director Phase Lubega said that although some services were unavailable during the outage, customer funds and transaction records remained secure throughout.
"I would emphasise that throughout the interruption, customer balances, customer transactions and the integrity of the ecosystem remained intact. At no point in time was any of this impacted in any way," Lubega said.
“We all know the inconvenience that our customers went through during this interruption, the inability to conclude their transactions, whether it is school fees payments, bill payments or supporting your family members. We apologise for what happened,” he said.
Customer funds were never affected
MTN Mobile Money managing director Phase Lubega said that although some services were unavailable during the outage, customer funds and transaction records remained secure throughout.
"I would emphasise that throughout the interruption, customer balances, customer transactions and the integrity of the ecosystem remained intact. At no point in time was any of this impacted in any way," Lubega said.
“We all know the inconvenience that our customers went through during this interruption, the inability to conclude their transactions, whether it is school fees payments, bill payments or supporting your family members. We apologise for what happened,” he said.