MTN Advises Ugandans to Pay Over The Top (OTT) Tax Instead of Opting for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) Which Consume Data X2.

Telecom service provider, MTN, has advised its subscribers to avoid using virtual private networks (VPNs) and instead pay the Over-The-Top (OTT) tax if they are to have better internet experiences.

Sen Somdev, the MTN Uganda chief marketing officer said that using VPN makes one’s internet experience much slower because they are going through another country to access internet, thus hampering data speeds.

Additionally, he said that it also opens up one’s devise to hackers to hack into their system and possibly commit fraud.

“Some people use VPNs because they want to bypass the OTT but they must understand that using VPN comes with a lot of trouble. As a telecom professional, I would always want people to pay OTT to be safer,” Somdev said.

Government introduced OTT tax in 2018, requiring social media users to pay a sh200 daily tax to access social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

While some Ugandans were happily paying OTT, the recent internet shutdown forced many Ugandans to shift to VPN.

Somdev was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of the MTN high volume internet data bundles dubbed “MTN Freedom Bundles’, which have no expiry date, at Hotel Africana on Tuesday.

Somdev said that the freedom bundles seek to enable it to serve its customers with higher volume data needs.

The packages range from sh5,000 for a 1GB data bundle, sh15,000 for 4GB, sh25,000 for 7GB, sh50,000 for 15GB and sh100,000 for 40GB.

MTN first introduce the freedom data bundles with no expiry in 2019, as it sought to address internet affordability issues and offer value for money for its subscribers. The packages then were small, ranging from 6MB to 1GB, which left out people with bigger data needs.

Somdev, however, said that despite the volume limitation, the earlier freedom bundles were well received by customers, prompting MTN to take the offer a couple of notches higher.

“The idea of having bundles that will not expire for as long as they remain unused appealed to our customers and they asked us to increase the data volumes which we have done. From now on, our customers can enjoy their data at their pace with no worries about it getting expired,” he said.

To enjoy MTN Freedom Bundles, customers need to have a 4G enabled SIM card, though they must not necessarily have to have a 4G phone.