MTN promises to reimburse customers after outage

©My Make OU via 123RF

The connectivity issues started on Sunday, MTN’s executive for group corporate affairs Chris Maroleng told Fin24. Customers, for example, who bought a data, SMS or airtime bundle on Sunday that they couldn’t use over a 24 hour period could qualify for the reimbursement, explained Maroleng.

“We need to establish of those one million, how many of them actually were affected,” Maroleng told Fin24. “We intend to make amends and compensate those subscribers who are eligible,” he said. MTN, though, is at the early stages of determining who could qualify for a reimbursement, explained Maroleng.

Frustrated customers complain

MTN told Fin24 on Tuesday morning that its network problems on Sunday and Monday were caused by a “minor glitch in the nodes carrying traffic related to the affected customers”.

During the day on Tuesday, some MTN customers said they were still experiencing connectivity issues. "I'm in Plettenberg Bay; I've not been able to SMS to other phones for the last 24 hours - although SMS from land facilities reach me," MTN customer David Friedman told Fin24 on Tuesday evening.

Another MTN customer, Amu Nwankoti, told of network problems on late Tuesday. "MTN says they resolved the network problem meanwhile I'm still experiencing it - (I'm) thinking of changing this service provider. It's so full of nonsense," Nwankoti told Fin24 by email.

However, on Tuesday night, MTN released a statement saying that its "network has been fully restored and all services are now fully restored".

MTN is South Africa's second biggest mobile network by subscribers after Vodacom. In October last year, MTN reported that it had 29 million subscribers in South Africa.

Fin24 via News24 Wire