[kictanet] The status of telco regulation in kenya

[Ali Hussein]

Listers

The yumobile CEO is crying foul regarding the 'stringent' conditions put forward by the CAK to enable Safaricom (who now say they have pulled out of the deal) and Airtel divide up the moribund telco among themselves. To quote him:-

“We have been fighting to get the regulator to enforce infrastructure sharing in the industry for years. This never happened until yuMobile announced an acquisition deal and we don’t understand why. If these conditions were enforced earlier, we wouldn’t have contemplated leaving the market in the first place,” the CEO noted.

http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/smartcompany/Regulator-on-the-spot-as-yuMobile-deal-stalls-/-/1226/2297090/-/qf9n90/-/index.html

Is the CAK justified in putting such conditions on a commercial transaction? 

Besides the infrastructure and spectrum which of course is public property leased out to the telcos how about the condition that Safaricom must share its Mpesa agent network? Isn't this akin to the CBK forcing banks to share their branch networks with other less branch endowed players? Is this even within the framework of regulation?

By now I think the mobile money networks should been seamlessly interoperable and this in my humble opinion is what CAK should have forced the telcos to have done.

So now yumobile is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

I hope this situation gets resolved fairly quickly because there are several thousand Kenyans who will be adversely affected if it doesn't.


Ali Hussein

+254 770 906375 / 0713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim
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"I fear the day technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots".  ~ Albert Einstein

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