It’s one thing to name your operation or business ‘smart’ but another altogether to live it. For the proprietors of Smart Telecom, everything was smart about their operations until something inexplicable happened. So inexplicable it must have been that no one wants to talk about it or even the fate of Smart Telecom.
The nice name stands. The telecom remains ‘operational’. But there are just so many unanswered questions about its operations that it makes very little sense even asking. However, for curiosity’s sake, where is Smart Telecom?
Smart Telecom stormed the market in March 2014 with a colourful launch and massive publicity. It is owned and operated by Industrial Promotion Services, a subsidiary of the Aga Khan Fund for Development under the leadership of Abdelatif Bousiani as chief executive officer.
The telecom offers voice, data and several other mobile telephony value added services (VAS). Smart Telecom’s first two years in the market were of a promising telecom, with many hoping that, using the bottomless Aga Khan pocket, it would compete favorably with the big boys.
Actually, at the end of 2014, its first year in business, Smart Telecom reportedly had 100,000 subscribers and, in a dialogue with journalists at their offices in Kampala at the time, CEO Bouziani said: “We are going to spend $300 million over the next five years to bring the latest technology to expand our telecommunication services, especially data network services in Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.