Rwanda, a country situated in the heart of Africa, with a thousand hills inhabited by more than 10 million souls, and a merging telecom market. The first mobile operator , MTN Rwandacell (now MTN Rwanda, www.mtn.co.rw) started in 1998 offering GSM (2G network) post and prepaid services. At first the company managed to attract a good number of mobile subscribers but not for long due to the high prices of the proposed services and the economic situation of the country (GDP of $440 in 1996). Things started to get interesting with the arrival of the second mobile service provider, Rwandatel (www.rwandatel.co.rw), ending a 10 year monopoly by MTN. The new player brought in addition to the classic 2G network, a 3rd generation network (3G) enabling users data communication (surf the internet on their handsets for example) with the existing voice communication provided by the 2G network. Later on MTN had to upgrade its network as well. Rwandatel magnetized more than 120,000 subscribers in its first 2 months of operation. Another shake in the market came a year later with the entrance of a third player, Tigo Rwanda (www.tigo.co.rw), in november 2009. The new kids on the block real take off came few months later in March 2010 with unbeatable prices: 10rwf/min for calls and 1rwf/sms. With a 3.5G network and additional services on top of voice and data, Tigo shook the market with the fall of internal as well as external call prices.
Recently RURA (Rwanda Utility and Regulator Agency, www.rura.gov.rw), the ITU of Rwanda, decided to revoke the 2G and 3G license due to non-fulfillment of some contractual obligations and a difficult financial situation.
Now MTN Rwanda and Tigo Rwanda are sharing the cake with a 39.6% penetration making a total of 4,247,751 mobile subscribers by August 2011.
