[kictanet] The Death of Landlines?

Sat Jul 21 10:55:00 EAT 2012

Dear Dorcas,

I'm another of the 3000, my office landlines whose cables run through Loita street have been down for the past four months with no resolution in sight. My main concern is if this can happen smack in the middle of Nairobi CBD, where you'd assume TKL has its biggest landline customers what does it say about TKLs ability and mandate to provide this service?

Regards, 
Harry Karanja

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 21, 2012, at 9:41 AM, Dorcas Muthoni <dmuthoni at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Edith,
> 
> I totally agree with you. Our TKL lines went down end of March after the onset of the rains. I understand about 3000 customers have been down on Loita Street since then. Remember the story of the rains going with the lines..
> 
> We have called anybody and everybody to have this sorted. Customer care is not sincere, the person in charge of our lines has kept taking us rounds.
> 
> I saw Orange the other day asking treasury to bail them out, this is actually a serious matter and they should be exposed to relevant authorities.
> 
> Services must be rendered, i know Orange hope to make in roads on GSM, but they have the responsibility to ensure that the copper network investment is not lost.
> 
> TKL is still partly owned by GoK. 
> 
> Muthoni
> 
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 12:09 AM, Edith Adera <eadera at idrc.or.ke> wrote:
> Phillip/Washington,
>  
> While vandalism may be a big issue (and thanks to law it's now an economic crime), the question still not answered as Washington rightly points out is what became of TKL/Orange service delivery?
>  
> How can you have clients off service for more than 3 months while they pay for the basic cost of maintaining landlines that are not working and with NO idea when the problem will be resolved? Can this be categorized as "denial of service" hence subject to CCK intervention? what are the regulatory implications of persistent poor QoS?
>  
> If there is any lister from TKL/Orange, can they let us know what is going on? any word from CCK?
>  
> Edith  
> ________________                                   
> Edith Ofwona Adera
> Senior Program Specialist
> Climate Change & Water Program
> International Development Research Centre | Centre de recherches pour le développement international
> Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa
> Tel: +254202713160 | Fax/Téléc: +254202711063 | Skype: edithadera
> eadera at idrc.or.ke | www.idrc.ca | www.crdi.ca
> 
> From: kictanet [kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Odhiambo Washington [odhiambo at gmail.com]
> Sent: 20 July 2012 23:41
> To: Edith Adera
> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] The Death of Landlines?
> 
> Thanks, Philip, but this is pure nostalgia you've put across. It has nothing to do with service delivery, really.
> 
> TKL is the only company that had fibre as the last mile before everyone else. Did they take advantage of that?
> 
> TKL is the parent company of Safaricom, who now is the market leader. What went wong?
> 
> Do you remember the days of "The Watchman" - when people had to resort to the Daily Nation's Watchman column in order to spur KPT&C into action?
> 
> I see the problem as being more of culture than vandalism. Yes, there is vandalism, but culture plays out more prominently.
> 
> You just need to single out a problem, like what Edith is facing and you'll come to realize that vandalism has nothing to do with it.
> 
> Even KPLC faces vandals who take away transformers - a more dangerous venture. If they were TKL, there will be no more service on copper!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 10:30 PM, Philip Adar <philip.adar at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem with the landlines has nothing to do with Telkom Kenya Limited (TKL), but has everything to do with the rest of us, yes all of us as Kenyans. TKL as a company will always be happy to offer better services to her customers in this competitive and saturated telecommunications market place.
> 
> Investment in copper is a very expensive undertaking. It is expensive to procure and  install copper cables more than any other form of telecommunications infrastructure the world over. Many companies who operate copper lines make profit by striving to derive maximum benefit from copper over long durations of time (maybe 5 to 10 years of service). But of late, the Kenyan populace has developed a very high appetite for harvesting copper such that even getting 24hours of copper in the ground is becoming a nightmare!
> 
> I know this from my previous experience while working for TKL.
> 
> TKL has a maintenance team. Every time an outage occurs (most cases will be that somebody has cut-out and stolen some copper cable), they will respond by visiting the affected areas and replacing the stolen cables. But in 99% of the cases, the replaced cable  will be stolen the very night it is installed! The thieves will keep an eye and immediately the cable is replaced, they will come harvesting again!!!
> 
> Now the question arises: How many times will the company be financially capable of replacing cables that get stolen 24 hours later? 
> 
> I remember with nostalgia some times back when overhead copper cables used to run parallel to the major roads in Kenya; even to the remote village where I come from, we had copper cables providing telecommunications services to the local post office. It was common to see KPLC power cables on one side of the road and Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC) cables on the other. How comes KPLC cables still remain standing while KPTC cables are today non existent? Do anyone believe KPTC initiated a project to harvest the cables and kept them in a store somewhere?
> 
> People in this country; and perhaps people in the ICT industry have made money by profiteering from copper cable vandalism!    
> 
> It is still common to get fixed lines in developed countries, and I guarantee that fixed lines will remain the best form of providing telecommunication services for several years into the future. 
> 
> The ministry of communications (thanks to Dr. Ndemo) has done her bit by supporting the industry by introducing strict penalty for cable vandals. We need to do our part by encouraging community policing and ensuring that all cable vandals are identified, arrested  and charged in court.
> 
> TKL would love to have everyone on landlines, in fact TKL would be very happy to install additional landlines if we were to stop stealing them. In my view, it may not be very correct to believe that TKL employes are very incompetent and  just too lazy to support the infrastructure which generates revenue for the company.
> 
> We have identified a problem, and the problem is extremely unsustainable levels of cable theft than has been experienced in any part of the world before. We  need to see people here generating ideas on how we can root out cable vandalism in our society. We need ideas on methods of providing infrastructure sustainability in our country. The academia, the industry and the society have roles to play to see a future of development into vision 2030, a future of honesty, a future devoid of business malpractices that have seen some organizations benefiting using in appropriate means by sabotaging others... 
> 
> TKL, our companies, our institutions and all our people need such ideas. This should be the focus....
> 
> Regards
> Philip
> 
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Edith Adera <eadera at idrc.or.ke> wrote:
> Lister’s
> 
>  
> 
> Does anyone know what’s going on at…is it Orange Telkom or Telkom Kenya? about landlines. When corporate lines go down it seems they are not being repaired, is this a sign of the “death of landlines”?
> 
>  
> 
> Seriously need to understand what is going on?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Personally, I think that unless someone has something special to carry on top of the copper, then it's that time in life they drop the "landline". There is nothing special about them.
> It's also pretty easy these days for an organization to "change their contact phone numbers"  - by a simple change of "Our Contacts" on the website, or a mailshot to their suppliers/clients.
> 
> Sorry I did not answer your question directly, but TKL/Orange has been working on redoing their cabling in many areas. Perhaps this is what is affecting you. I understand how difficult it is to do business with Orange when it comes to fixing problems. Their Customer Care still sux, and the bureaucracy is still very much embedded. I resorted to walking to the Exchange and seeking out the technicians in order to have my problems with landlines addressed. Maybe you should do just that!
> 
>  
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
> Nairobi,KE
> +254733744121/+254722743223
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
> I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Regards
> 
> Philip Adar
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
> Nairobi,KE
> +254733744121/+254722743223
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 
> I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
> 
> 
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> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Muthoni
> 
> My Blog: http://rugongo.blogspot.com/
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> 
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> The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
> 
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