Written by Paul Mwijagye

Kampala, Uganda — The increasing competition in Uganda’s telecom industry has seen companies come up with innovations to maintain their customers and attract new ones.

 
Most of the innovations are being introduced by the new entrants in the market but have also woken up the ‘sleeping giants’ to protect their customers from being snatched away.

 
 Warid Telecom’s promotions such as Mega Bonus, One shilling per minute calls and lately ‘Paka Last’  have sent shivers in the industry and has has helped the company grow its clientele base to over 1million subscribers.

 
With Paka Last, a customer loads airtime worth Shs1500 and they are given 24-hour unlimited Warid to Warid calls. When a customer subscribes for three or more days they are given bonus days.

 
Not to be left out, other companies have come up with equally exciting. Most recently, Orange Telecom came up with a promotion dubbed ‘Gyekiri’ which is almost similar to Paka Last. The difference is that when you load airtime and subscribe to Gyekiri, the airtime is not deducted as is the case with Paka Last.  When a customer loads airtime worth Ushs1, 000, they are given free Orange to Orange calls and they can use their airtime to call other networks as well, send SMS, or use it for mobile Internet.  

 
The offer started this month and will be running up to May.

 
Zain Uganda last week also launched a new promotion dubbed ‘Zain Flexxy’.  Under the new promotion, Zain customers will be able to make calls with discounts as high as 99% across all networks.  The new tariff has been introduced with a promotion where some five lucky customers will win Ushs20million each every week.

 
The promotion will last 8 weeks and a grand draw will take place where one lucky customer will win Ushs100million. To win the prize money, customers will be required to use at least Sh500 daily.  Zain Flexxy comes weeks after MTN Uganda introduced ‘The Goal of Goals’ promotion where customers are set to win houses ahead of the World Cup. To win a house, customers need to use airtime of not less than Ushs2,000 weekly.

 
Uganda telecom has also launched a promotion where it gives its customers 100% bonus when they load airtime of any denomination. The promotion is expected to run throught the Easter season.   However despite the promotions the subscription base for all mobile operators in Uganda is yet to grow compared to the population. Information availed by the Uganda Communication Commission indicates that of the 31million Ugandans, only 10 million are connected. Of these about 4 million have more than one sim card; reducing the number to about 6million.