IT IS MONEY BACK FOR AIRTELS BLACKBERRY SUBSCRIBERS
Airtel Uganda has just announced that they will give all their subscribers for the BlackBerry service three days credit or an extension of service by three days for prepaid customers, as a result of the global outage caused recently by a major hardware and back up failure.
BlackBerrys owners Research in Motion inexplicably remained shtumm for several days, becoming THE JOKE in the global Twitter and Facebook community before eventually their CEO had to eat public humblepie and apologized belatedly, but not before the reputation of the service had gone down the proverbial drain.
Jokes from Apple aficionados like iWork or iDontFail jammed the cyber air waves and Airtels step certainly will to some extend appease their Ugandan users, though business lost or messages missed will for some time remain the topic of legal experts, some of whom expect a class action suit to be brought in the United States against RiM / BlackBerry. Airtel, according to information available, is the first of the mobile phone companies in Uganda offering BlackBerry services to make this offer though others may now be compelled to follow suit, less they wish to risk their clientele get even more upset than they already were.
Airtel has in Uganda now secured second spot in terms of market share behind runaway leaders MTN and ahead of UTL which continues to be dogged by their inability to advertise as a result of a media ban for alleged nonpayment and remains tied up in court with competitors over disputed interconnection charges, aggravated by key shareholder Gadaffi Libya being sidelined when the UN passed sanctions back in April against the regime. Ugandas airwaves are occupied by five main mobile operators, MTN, Airtel formerly Zain formerly Celtel, Uganda Telecom, Orange and Warid, though some smaller companies offering CDMA mobile technology for wireless fixed lines are also still active in the market. Visitors to the Pearl of Africa can buy Sim cards at the airport already or else literally at street corners, a still cheaper option to call home from Uganda than suffering often astronomic roaming surcharges, inspite of the recent doubling of tariffs by all telecom companies.
