MTN Ghana has announced a number of loyalty reward packages and a juicy corporate social responsibility (CSR) offers to say thank you to Ghanaians as they mark the 10millionth customer on the MTN network. The company first said thank you to five of its first group of customers who have been on the network for the past 15 years by presenting each of the five with Apple Ipads, one gigabyte of data every month for 10 months, and 10 hours of call time. For the rest of the over 10 million customers, the company launched a promotion in which every GHC1 to GHC4.99 recharge earns 10 per cent bonus, GHC5 – GHC9.99 earns 50% bonus and GHC10 and above earns 100% bonus. But the bonus package is limited to only calls and data consumption only on MTN and not for call from MTN to other networks or abroad. The company has also instituted the MTN 10 Millionth Award Scheme, under which 10 tertiary level students, one from each of the 10 regions in Ghana, would win scholarships worth GHC10,000 on merit. MTN is also doing promotions on selected radio stations in which its gives away 10 of GHC10 recharge cards to people who are fast enough to reccharge the numbers after the presenter has read them out. The Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Michael Ikpoki noted that with 10 million customers and counting, MTN had become more than just a telecom company, but part of the social fabric of Ghana. He said MTN was grateful to government, the regulator, partners, stakeholders, customers and to Ghanaians as a whole for the show of support, encouragement and show of confidence in the brand and in the company. “But this success was not achieved on a platter of gold but on some strong values – values of leader, innovation, relationship, integrity and can-do,” he said. He said MTN considered that show of confidence as a challenge and an opportunity to continue making the lives of its customers richer. Mr. Ikpoki however noted that the success had come with challenges such as theft of copper cables, destruction of underground fibre optic cable which had created some unwarranted interruptions to network transmission. This year alone, between January and October there has been a total of 138 cuts on MTN’s underground fibre and that has disrupted service to millions of customers, cost MTN millions in repairs and replacement cost, and also partly led to the recent fine of GHC300,000 for poor quality service. “We’ve had road construction workers who destroy our underground cables without regard for the implication of that to our business, and this has led to some loss of revenue to us and to subscriber inconvenience,” Mr. Ikpoki said. He said there had also been challenges with taxes and acquisition of operation permits, all of which had hindered the desire to provide wider coverage and meet quality standards. Mr. Ikpoki however assured customers that MTN still maintained a can-do spirit despite the odds, and was therefore working with governments and its related agencies to deal with those issues in order to continue providing quality services to Ghanaians. He said in the midst of the challenges, MTN remained committed to its social responsibility and had spent some GHC5.8millions on education, health, ICT centres and others, adding that an economic empowerment wing has also been launched recently. Corporate Service Executive, Cynthia Lumor, said MTN was fully aware of the challenges facing customers but MTN would continue to invest in the network with the sole aim of giving the customer the best experience on the MTN network. She said “since MTN came into Ghana just over two years ago we have spent over one billion on network improvement and just last year we spent over US$400 million on network infrastructure alone and this year more money has been spent in that direction.” Minister of Communications Haruna Iddrisu assured the telecom operators that his ministry would set up and lead a seven-sector committee to look into the issue of business operation permit, but noted that taxes are necessary for national development so government would not reduce taxes because corporates are complaining. He however promised that from 2012 government will give incentives to operators who extend voice and data services to the deprived areas of the country, adding that the stabilization levy will also be abolished to reduce the tax burden on telecom operators.