MTC makes winter hot with free minutes, introduces unlimited broadband

This year's winter season may have been colder than anticipated, but as far as the 081-Nation was concerned, July was a sizzling hot month for the 081-Nation, who enjoyed the benefits of MTC's promotion, clocking up 70 million minutes of calls, more than 300 million SMSes and more than 3.1 Terabytes in Internet usage - all of it completely for free.

The 081 Night Life Promotion generated a usage of more than 70 million minutes during the month of July, which translates to almost one hour for free per each of MTC's 1.2 million customers.

More than two million minutes per day were also used, peaking between 10pm and 11pm and again during the last hour of the free promotion between 5am and 6am every day. This shows that the 081-Nation definitely make that important call to friends and family before they go to bed, and it is definitely also the first thing they do when they wake up, all for free.

While some people were calling for free at night, others spent their time sending millions of messages per day, with recorded figures indicating that on average, over 10 million free messages were sent every single day during the month of July.

Through the Free SMS Every Day promotion for prepaid and post-paid customers, over one million messages were sent in a single hour, mainly also during peak hours.

But the cherry on top of the cake is the promotion of the “Happy Hour” for post and prepaid broadband, with unlimited down/upload from 1am to 6am. If anyone had thought that no one would wake up to take advantage of the free broadband, the reality is that tens of thousands of MTC customers are surfing the Internet during the night, downloading more than 100 000MB per night.

In simpler terms, that huge torrent can be equated to 50 000 songs per night, or 100 complete HD movies, or even 200 000 e-mails. The free offer was specifically designed to be at night so as to maintain a high quality of service standards during working, and not to negatively impact those more than 20 000 customers who use MTC Broadband to work during the day.

And just to make sure the cold stays out for good, MTC has launched a special edition of Postpaid Broadband to give heavy Internet users a product that suits them, because it offers unlimited downloading for only N$999 per month.

This new product has no capping, but is subjected to a typical personal usage behaviour of heavy users, hence the reason they must adhere to MTC Fair Use Policy. This means that while it is acceptable for any user to down or upload huge amounts of data, abusive practices and reselling of bandwidth will be monitored and MTC will have the right to suspend or even terminate the contract of anyone who persists with such practices. This step is critical to ensure that the broadband service provided to the customers is of great value, fast and reliable.

According to MTC's Managing Director, Mr Miguel Geraldes, the impressive results of free usage underline the company's commitment to:

* Maintaining the most affordable way in Namibia to contact the 081-Nation (MTC customers)
* Giving the most affordable usage of messaging in Africa
* Speeding up the development of wireless broadband in Namibia in order to catch up with the most developed countries in Europe and the USA

Geraldes said: “We know very well that if MTC charged for these services, not many of our people would not be able to afford this level of usage, and we therefore challenge anyone to make comparisons of our promotions in the SADC region in order to see if there is anyone who can give so much to their customers.”

MTC is Namibia's leading telecommunications service provider, with over 1.2 million active subscribers in a country of two million inhabitants, and offer data and voice services (post-paid and prepaid).