During a press brief held earlier today at Kabira Country Club Bukoto, Smile Telecom stamped its continued presence in Uganda with hopes of resuming its full services by 30th June 2021 depending on the high court decision towards the ongoing dispute between the telco and one of its partners.

Smile attributes the major cause of the ongoing outage to the dispute between it and one of its critical suppliers since both parties failed to reach a mutual understanding attracting an escalation of prevailing matters to the courts of law.

The court decision expected to be concluded on 21st June 2022 is essential to both Smile’s past and future operations in Uganda. With less on who the critical partner is, the Smile Country Manager assured customers that whether the court decision comes out in the telco’s favor or not, they will find ways to compensate customers for the losses incurred.

As Smile, we shall come back, and we shall come back in a good way.

We are making efforts, and can confidently say, if you are within Namave industrial park, the services are up, we are trying to make sure that this partner comes to the table, and if that doesn’t work, then a network similar to Namave will be rolled out.

Silvanus Okoth – Smile Country Manager

As an IT standard, network redundancy is an important factor for any provider across the world. By this standard, Smile telecom currently has a live network available in the areas of Namanve Industrial Park, Seeta, Kireka, and Bweyogerere.

As confirmed by the country manager, the current plan used in Namanve may be adopted to all its coverage areas depending on the court’s decision on 21st June 2022. If Smile wins the case, normal network operations will resume, else, the backup plan is one the ongoing efforts the telco has adopted to find solutions even before the court verdict.

With the Ugandan Communication Commission (UCC) in the know of the matter, Smile thanks them for assisting in the dialogue process between the telco and its critical partner to ensure the restoration of services for customers is achieved.

As a commitment, each and every Smile customer that is affected by the current outage will be fully compensated once the telco makes a successful comeback. For now, the telco confirms efforts to have its services restored throughout the country before or after the court’s decision.

In light of the COVID 19 Pandemic, Mobile and Home broadband internet have become a necessity in people’s lives. With working patterns changing from physical to virtual, eLearning taking a center boost, the need for low-cost mobile internet data is high making Smile telecom’s new offer a pandemic deal to watch out for.

Speaking about the new campaign, the Smile Communications head of marketing, Felix Owilo inked that the mySmile App was created to enhance customer experience by managing their accounts quickly and conveniently without visiting a service center as he remarked.

“To benefit from the 20% EXTRA offer, our Customers only need to recharge with any Monthly data bundle using the MySmile App,”

Said Felix Owilo – Head of Marketing and Communications at Smile Telecom

With the promotion available on the mySmile App, customers will be able to get 20% more data to use during the bundle’s active timeframe before expiring. Much as Smile Telecom has not thought of non-expiring bundles yet, the 20% extra bonus serves as a toss to an extended internet experience.

Now, when a Smile customer recharges with a 10GB Monthly bundle, they will get 2GB extra data tuning 12GB as the bundle’s volume. If they recharge with a 50GB Monthly bundle, they will get 10GB extra data with making it 60GB in total.

Similar to MTN and Airtel, the mySmile App is available for both Android and IOS users through the Google Playstore and App store respectively. Under the hood, it enables customers to manage their account, check available balances, recharge voice or data bundles, view recharge history, and alot more features.

Smile is pleased to inform the public that we will absorb and remit the new tax on behalf of our customers subject to future review. We will maintain the current prices of all our data bundles and remain committed to delivering high-quality, reliable, and SuperFast internet services.

“At this time when most Ugandans are trying to survive the covid-19 pandemic, Smile will be absorbing the 12% Excise tax on internet data. We believe this will go a long way to enable our customers to stay online and connect with friends and family, work from home, do online learning, and enjoy entertainment without limitation,” commented Felix Owilo, Head of Marketing and Communications at Smile Communications.

During these challenging times, we encourage our customers to stay at home and recharge using the MySmile App, which is accessible on Playstore or AppStore.

EDITOR’s NOTE: Part of this story is from an official press release shared to the Tech Point Magazine team.