We are residents in a small coastal village – Kleinemonde, Seafield – situated almost 20 kms outside of Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape. MTN cellphone reception in Kleinemonde has become increasingly problematic, coupled with the ongoing loadshedding that is not stopping anytime soon. 

Over the last few weeks (since 17 October 2022) village residents have continued to experience erratic MTN signal on a day-to-day basis. When there is loadshedding, MTN customers in Kleinemonde have no signal at all! When we are fortunate enough to get a signal and answer a call, or dial out, the line often is lost mid-way. Text messages arrive only sporadically. Increasingly, more often than not there is absolutely no signal at all every single day.  

Many of the residents in this small village are retired or elderly, and depend on cellphones as a means of contact security. Some of the residents work from home and need to be able to communicate telephonically. Other residents are trying to run small businesses but they are often unavailable when called due to a lack of MTN signal. 

In cases of emergency it would be good to know that we could all rely on our cellphone service provider. Unfortunately we have not been able to rely on MTN for some time now! How are residents to contact family, colleagues, doctors, hospitals, plumbers, electricians, and others without telephonic access? Not everyone has WiFi or Whatsapp to communicate. How do we phone for help if there is a fire? Or if someone needs an ambulance? What about those outside of Kleinemonde who try to contact residents but repeatedly get no reply because the MTN customers they dial have no signal? 

We regularly log complaints with MTN every time there are problems. This in itself is difficult to do when there is no signal and we cannot even call the call centre! The most recent email I sent to MTN to address the issue came back with a reply that “the site you are logging onto is down”. Some residents who have tired of MTN’s lack of service delivery, have already switched over to Vodacom or another service provider. Some who are still with MTN have been forced to get back-up with another provider. This ought not to be necessary! Many of us have been loyal, paying, contract clients with MTN for decades, and we continue to pay for a service we do not receive. MTN's poor service delivery when there are outages is simply not acceptable.

MTN service delivery has to change drastically and the constant outages must be given serious attention. MTN must address this matter urgently and ensure that whatever problems keep causing the constant outages in Kleinemonde are attended to timeously so that we can use the uninterrupted cellphone signal for which we pay.

Should MTN wish to retain its loyal customers, action must happen soon. The service provider must provide the service it promises to the paying customer. MTN is not the only service provider and if service delivery does not improve, many of us will be forced to find a more reliable service provider.

We demand improvements or we will have no option but to cancel our contracts - without penalty - as MTN is not providing a service.

                                                         Photo by Eirik Solheim on Unsplash