MTN Nigeria has rewarded its subscribers with free data and airtime for national calls & SMS, as compensation for the outage witnessed on October 9, 2021.
This was confirmed from the messages the Telco giant via its Chief Executive Officer, Karl Toriola, shared with the subscribers on Sunday.
The CEO’s message was to apologise to customers who were affected by the outage and to notify them of the company’s decision to compensate them with free airtime and data.
Toriola in his message stated, “Dear Subscriber, we apologise again for the outage on October 9. This video message is for you to watch free of charge: bit.ly/message-from-karl.
“You’ve been refunded 1MB + N126.34 airtime for national calls & SMS valid for 14 days, till October 31. To check your balance, dial *556#.”
“In addition, time-bound subscriptions are being extended to ensure full value is delivered,” Toriola added.
In a press statement released by the company, Toriola apologised again to all MTN customers who were affected, while assuring of the telecom company’s commitment to providing reliable service.
“On behalf of the entire MTN team, I want to start with a heartfelt apology. We are truly sorry for the disruption this caused for so many in our MTN family. We know that millions of people rely on us to stay connected to their loved ones, to manage their businesses, to coordinate their lives. We take that responsibility, and privilege, very seriously. That’s why we are putting new measures in place to make sure we never experience anything like last Saturday again,” he said.
Recall MTN customers had experienced service outage and were unable to connect with loved ones and business associates in parts of the country.
Findings revealed that the customers were unable to use the mobile network operator’s call, data and SMS services. “Emergency calls only” showed on the screens of some MTN users around 04:30 pm on Saturday, October 09, 2021.
Some subscribers said that they started experiencing the outage around 2:30 pm on Saturday. Some of the users, who also subscribed to other telecom service providers, had switched over in the interim to link up with friends and family.
MTN Nigeria Communications Plc had attributed the outage to “an error that shifted all our 4G customers onto the 3G band. This overloaded the 3G band, causing a domino effect that impacted the whole network.”
In a press statement, MTN chief executive officer, Karl Toriola, explained that MTN’s technical team were able to rectify the problem in about five hours, allowing service restoration for customers to begin connecting with one another.
