Internet made easy

Yesterday I walked into Uganda Telecoms Limited’s temporary offices at
Posta Uganda (Their state of art Rwenzori Court location is under renovations) to fulfill my monthly obligations of paying for my internet connection. While this is nothing out of the ordinary for me, this time I was in for a pleasant surprise. The smartly dressed lady on the other side of the counter told me that my bill was approximately 40 US dollars.

Suspecting some sort of mistake I promptly pointed out to her that on average I pay about 100 dollars. ‘Oh !’ she said with a smile that made me forget of the hustle and bustle of the lunch time traffic jam I faced in the scorching Kampala heat while coming here, ‘With effect from 1st April our charges will be slashed by over 50%’ . To tell you the truth I had seen this coming. I have been following the developments in the Telecom industry for quite sometime now.

We have seen them digging, endless adverts on the media of the new era in online activity, fights on what amount was meant for what and even accusations and counter accusations with road authorities on who trespassed into whose allocated land. All the way from Busia and Malaba border towns criss-crossing the country were the fibre optics being laid.

Since 2008 we were promised that soon internet prices will go down and accessing such services will no longer be a luxury. Just a few weeks ago Mr Geoffrey Kiirya, the principal information scientist and spokesperson in the ministry of ICT was quoted in a local daily saying that 10 years from now everything will be fully-computerized and digitalized and people will even be able to work right from their homes. This now seems to be a reality indeed.

Now that the issue of cost is slowly being taken care of lets hope that the challenge of computer illiteracy will follow suit as well as programs be put in place to raise awareness about the benefits the web offers.

According to my projections the next issue that we will be discussing in the not so far future is whether lowering the price of broadband will lead to an increase in its use? But until then lets not count our chicks before the eggs have hatched and marvel at the far that we have come.
Francis Mwathi
Support Community Facilitator

“Uganda telecom broadband is an extremely fast internet access, targeted at those that need and appreciate the value of extreme speed. With a broadband connection you can enjoy the full range of internet services opening up a whole new world of content. Benefits
• Speeds of up to 128 kbs
• Always on internet access
• Virtual mail hosting (5 e-mail accounts) or one utlonline account
• Fixed IP
• One flat monthly fee
• No telephone bills
• A range of actions can be done at the same time like:
Download files or software, Share photos, Browse the web, Play games, Check E-mail, Streaming media i.e. you can watch high quality media on your PC such as music, videos, movie trailers, concerts etc - at a higher speed”.
From http://www.utl.co.ug/utl.php?i=16