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Following last week’s global BlackBerry service disruption, telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria, will compensate all customers on the service with a four-day extension on their current subscription. MTN joins Etisalat and Airtel who have already promised three days extensions earlier this week.
The compensation package is coming in spite of the fact that the outage was caused by a server failure from Research in Motion (RIM), the global provider of BlackBerry services.
According to Akinwale Goodluck, MTN’s corporate services executive, the compensation package is for the inconveniences MTN customers experienced during the downtime.
“MTN is a customer focused organisation and we are aware of the inconvenience our customers suffered during the down time. That is why, in spite of the fact that the three-day BlackBerry disruption was caused by an incident outside our control, we will extend by 4 days, the subscription of affected pre-paid and post-paid BlackBerry subscribers,” he said.’
During the outage, messaging and web browsing on BlackBerry were halted across many parts of the world. The devastating outages which lasted for hours at each day, impacted negatively on the company’s share price, dealing a blow on RIM battling to revive its battered market share amidst serious competition from iPhone and Android operating systems.
The disruptions were the worst since an outage swept North America two years ago, and analysts say it could ratchet up the negative sentiment towards a company already losing market share to rivals such as Apple and Samsung.
In Nigeria, where more than seven million subscribers from the four GSM operating companies rely on this business tool, the impact was seriously felt as communication with the tool could not go through during the period of outages in the week. From Lagos to Abuja, Kano to Port Harcourt, Ibadan to Yola, Enugu to Jos, it was the same.
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