The price wars have mainly been instigated by new players such as Warid Telecom, which is owned by the Essar Group of India. For example, Warid has been able to grow its subscriber base to 2 million in a space of three years, having launched operations in January 2008. Put together, telecom operators had a subscriber base of 8 million users in Uganda midway through last year, according to figures by the UCC.

Warid racked up those user numbers after introducing offers that have allowed users calls that are nearly free all day within its network, on top of other offers over the past 12 months.

Airtel (formerly Zain) followed Warid when it launched similar offers to increase its user numbers as well as keep its subscribers from jumping to the cheaper options.

The price wars have raised concern among bigger players that have been around longer, like MTN Uganda and Uganda Telecom, which were dragged into the fight for fear of losing subscribers, forcing them to slash their prices too.

Twelve months ago, the Ugandan telecom sector's average mobile call rate was 11 Ugandan shillings (US$0.004) per second, which fell to Ush5 and then to Ush3 per second. Orange Uganda, Airtel and Warid had promised to keep their rates at three shillings per second, but should UCC put the price ceiling above these prices, they will have no alternative but to change them.