[kictanet] Pondering mobile competition

[Andrea Bohnstedt]

The 'abuse' complaint was silly, I think: Zain's network was congested from
day one of their tariff launch. I'm sure, very very sure, that telecoms
professionals at both Zain and Bharti are, well, professional enough to
anticipate the need to increase network capacity if they launch such an
aggressive tariff.

You've seen the fun little leaked exchange between Rene Meza and Michael
Joseph - Zain approached Safaricom in the evening asking for capacity on the
Safaricom-owned link, and Joseph promised to look into this in the morning.
The interconnection agreement between both companies states that this
protocol can take up to seven days, as far as I understand.

http://www.ratio-magazine.com/201008203586/Kenya/News-Analysis-Telecoms-Price-Wars-Gone-Dirty.html

Either they could have just increased capacity before the launch, or, if
they were worried about alerting Safaricom to this, then just suck up and
tell customers that the network will be congested for another seven days.

So for Zain to come out the next morning and shout about abuse is dishonest
and a cheap marketing ploy that I think they really don't need.

I'm a happy capitalist. Competition is a good thing, in Kenya as elsewhere.
So I'd like them to compete on the strength of their services and concepts,
not by overnight accusations of 'abuse'.

Mind you, if Zain kill of Orange and Essar, we'll have a bit less
competition in terms of numbers, but hey ... :)

Happy phone calls,
Andrea





On 24 August 2010 14:34, Emmanuel Khisa <oloo.khisa at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Hi Andreas,
>
> You have spoken for me on this one...I have also wondered since zain/bharti
> lodged their complaint with CCK over clogged network, were they just playing
> spoilt kid or do they have a valid claim? My opinion is that since they have
> experienced an unanticipated rise in subscribers they didnt have the network
> infrastructure to support these calls and so quickly blame the rival and
> make them look bad. But then again maybe they have a valid case against the
> boys in green.
> Nonetheless the winner here is the consumer. Shall we safely say that we
> have entered the third mobile revolution.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:56 PM, Andrea Bohnstedt <
> andrea.bohnstedt at ratio-magazine.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering:
>>
>> Will CCK strictly enforce the cut-off deadline for unregistered SIM cards
>> at the end of August? Are Zain making sure that everyone picking up a new
>> line also register them immediately?
>>
>> If price war is Zain's strategy, will they have enough money left to
>> invest in infrastructure and customer service once their subscriber numbers
>> go up significantly? Will they be able to scale up both systems quickly
>> enough?
>>
>> Telkom Orange are cited in the media as complaining that the interconnect
>> rate also applies to their fixed line service and that this is not even
>> covering their costs (
>> http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/Telkom%20unhappy%20with%20interlink%20fee/-/1006/995372/-/o9pm5az/-/).
>> I wonder if the two big ones having it out won't kill the two small ones
>> first?
>>
>> Bharti/Zain have also launched free sms alongside lower on and off-net
>> calling rates and free minutes in Nigeria:
>> http://telecomyatra.afaqs.com/news/?sid=1652_Bharti+subsidiary+Zain+introduces+free+SMS+in+Nigeria
>>
>> Happy afternoon,
>> Andrea
>>
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>


-- 
Andrea Bohnstedt
Publisher
+254 720 960 322
www.ratio-magazine.com
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