A few years ago, cyber cafes were a sure venture of making money. With a few computers, constant power supply, one could mint money opening from 8.00am to midnight. There used to be long lines to access computers to go online. All over Uganda, including far-flung areas, Internet cafes ruled.
According to the Red Pepper of 18 August 2010, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs using statistics from International Telecom Union, revealed that Uganda had only 40,000 Internet users in the year 2000, the figure shot up to 2,500,000 in 2009. A quick look at the traffic metrics website Alexa.com, reveals that the most visited websites in Uganda are Face book, Yahoo, Google, You Tube, Live.com, Wikipedia, MSN, Twitter, LinkedIn, BBC etc.
Today, UTL has the biggest market share of data market. It has had the 3G service for a couple of years. However, Orange a new entrant in the telecommunications market came with a bang. MTN was to follow much later with its 3.5 G USB modem. The days of accessing Internet through a fixed phone and a wireless antenna pointed at the satellite of the service provider are gone
With modem prices down to shs. 70,000 as offered by Orange, and 500MB at shs. 25,000 per month, Internet is now affordable at home and everywhere else. It is no longer cool to while away your time at an Internet café.
The two big telecom players have dealt the death knoll to Internet cafes; MTN Uganda and Orange who are fighting for subscribers by offering them a chance to access their face book profiles on their mobile phones for free! Yes, for free! Zero cost to mobile user. Making the social networking platform, face book is slowly but surely becoming a household item.
DATA and mobile Internet services are emerging as the new competition war front for service providers ever since the landing of undersea fibre optic cables, TEAMS and SEACOM, about a year ago.
Users on the Orange network, can:
- Get Facebook for free on wap-enabled mobile phone - Go to m.facebook.com to view photos, chat or say what’s on your mind, with Orange Mobile Internet - users are only charged if they try uploading photos to their account or accessing external links at a rate of 0.9/= per kb.
MTN Uganda on the other hand, offers:
- free mobile browsing on the new site: http://0.facebook.com (facebook zero) - Facebook Zero is optimized for speed. Users are charged when they browse photos - users are able to update their profile status messages
Telecoms are ever looking for ways to entice subscribers to their networks. The battle is slowly but surely shifting to how to turn the growing number of online users to continually access the Internet on their mobile phones.
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