THE mobile war in Kenya between the two main mobile telephony providers, Zain Kenya and Safaricom, has further escalated with Zain accusing its competitor of employing dirty tactics.
Just a day after Zain lowered its calling rate to Sh. 3 across the network making it the lowest amongst the other three mobile telephony providers, Safaricom has now allegedly jammed traffic by blocking all calls from Zain to Safaricom.
Zain is crying foul and pointing a finger at Safaricom, accusing it of sabotage and abusing its dominance by not increasing its capacity to allow Zain calls go through.
The network has since written to industry regulator, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), pleading with it to step in and investigate the matter.
In a press statement, Zain Managing Director Rene Meza said: “Our customers are experiencing congestion and call set-up issues when they call Safaricom, and not when calling Zain.
This is purely for the simple reason that our main competitor has been delaying the capacity increase request from our side to accommodate the incremental traffic coming from us after we launched our new offer in the market.”
He accused Safaricom of being uncooperative despite numerous complaints from his network.
“We simply requested for a swap out of some circuits from the Safaricom-to-Zain link to the Zain- to-Safaricom link. In our experience, such a request can be accommodated in a matter of minutes and at no cost. Much to our surprise, we could not get a commitment from Safaricom as to when the configuration would take place.”
Safaricom has respondent to Zain by denying the allegations through its own press statement which suggested that Zain had no one to blame for the call problem but its own poor planning.
It said it would continue with its unflinching commitment to integrity in all its operations, including honouring the terms of agreement with its competitors.
“We must admit that we are quite surprised by the claims made by Zain that we are trying to stifle the delivery of their traffic to our network,” Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Michael Joseph, said.
“These claims are quite insincere considering that Zain is fully aware of the procedures that all operators must adhere to when seeking to increase their inter-connect traffic capacity.”
“Safaricom has now and in the past continued to adhere to the terms of the inter-connect agreements signed with all operators and wishes to urge other operators to do the same. We have always been ethical in the way we conduct our business and our integrity is the greatest pillar of our success in Kenya.
“We will however not take responsibility for the consequences of poor planning by other operators,” said Joseph.
Joseph added that Safaricom had always been courteous to Zain, “even to the extent of accommodating them when they were unable to clear the significant debt that they owed us”.
He added that the two networks should discuss the issue guided by these parameters.
The Communications Commission of Kenya has lowered interconnection rates from Sh4.42 to Sh2.21, effective September 1st. Zain became the first operator to take advantage of the new rates in an effort to increase its subscriber base.
BRIAN ADERO in Nairobi, Kenya
