We shall provide reliable services to Ugandans, says Vodafone CEO

Tell us a bit about your industry and management background?
Vodafone Uganda is a so-called partner market of Vodafone Group. This means that Vodafone Group has no equity in Vodafone Uganda (that is, they do not own us) but we have so-called partner markets agreement which allows us to use the brand which gives us access basically to all the products and services that have been developed to procurement agreements and so forth.
Personally, I have been in this industry for more than 25 years during which I have served in very senior positions in different companies and various parts of the world. I served as CEO of the now defunct CELTEL, in Amsterdam. Prior to that, I worked with Sonafone for 10 years.

Why has Vodafone chosen to come to the Ugandan market at this time?
It is an opportunity that came out of the partnership agreement that Vodafone and Afrimax group entered a couple of months ago. Afrimax having licences for LTE 4G broadband in a number of countries in sub–Saharan Africa led to the discussion on the choice of the first market where we should make a country agreement. We looked at Uganda and we believed that Uganda is an interesting market, we believe that there is significant opportunity in Uganda. We realised that Uganda is very well positioned with internet access since there are several sea fibres coming directly into Kampala unlike some other countries in which we have licences. So we felt that Uganda was a very good place to have an agreement in East Africa.

Given the number of operators in the Ugandan market, aren’t you coming late to the party?
[Laughs] No. We do not think so. We firmly believe that there is still a lot of opportunity in Uganda. According to statistics, only 60 per of the Ugandan population have mobile connection. This implies that less than 50 per cent of the population has no mobile connection at all. We also know that less than 20 per cent has an internet connection. So these figures lead to one conclusion; that there is still a lot of untapped opportunity in this country.

What unique services is Vodafone going to offer the Ugandan market?
Since we are part of the big Vodafone family and Vodafone having been around for many years, we are able to tap into the products and services that have been developed in all those years. It is also important to say Vodafone Group has agreements, for example for content, with providers. We shall get access to these providers as any other company in the Vodafone Group has.

A number of Ugandan telecom consumers have consistently complained of poor services in both the voice and data segments. How do you intend to address the problem of poor network reliability?
Actually one of our company’s key values is going to be reliability. We carried out extensive research before commencing our operations and we learnt that people are concerned about reliability. Our key values are consistency, reliability and world class customer services.

How widespread is your network in Uganda?
For the time being it is in Kampala and Entebbe. We have a three year product plan. In that period we shall have covered more parts of the country. We are entering agreements with mobile operators to have coverage all over the country for voice services and data services. We do not intend to cover any villages in the country at any given time with our 4G network.

Some industry analysts have predicted more mergers in the Uganda telecom market, what is your take on their predictions?
Well, I cannot speculate on that. I also read about that in the newspapers but I really can not speculate.

How competitive are your prices in comparison to those of the other operators in the market?
Competitiveness is something that is decided by the customers. We have just opened our first stores in the country and we have published our prices on the internet. We are waiting for the customer’s feedback. We believe that it is both attractive and competitive pricing. We also do not think that price is the only parameter for people to select a network. As I said before consistency and reliability are something that you have to earn unlike prices of a service which one can simply communicate. We believe that the retention of our customer is equally as important as acquiring them so we look forward to keeping them once they come to us.