With competition for scarce subscribers heating up, telecom companies are looking at fine-tuning their network infrastructure to offer that extra service other operators are not providing.

Subscribers have been very much concerned with network glitches which have most of the time gone out of proportion during the big holiday seasons. Important holidays like christmas, new year’s day, valentines and easter the network load experienced by the telecom companies is so great that the congestion leaves so many people frustrated because they cannot communicate with their loved ones.

Among the hurdles telecom companies front for failing to provide a country-wide coverage include, mentioned in local daily; huge vasts of land covered by forest and water, no readily available access to grid power to run the masts and very high taxes levied on telecoms products by the government. The people, local leaders and environmental agencies are also cited for asking for huge fees for permission to setup masts in their areas.

Uganda with the highest taxes levied on telecommunications in the region would do better reducing charges to attract more of her citizens to an afford an otherwise necessary service. A subscriber base of only 8.2 million shared among all networks out of 30 million (2008 est.) surely is still fertile ground for business. With better and cheaper availability of the communication equipment plus affordable rates for the rural poor, more subscribers would not hesitate to talk their voices hoarse.