[kictanet] "Talk to Safaricom" Responses to Day 4 Questions

[Stephen Chege]

Dear all

Below are the responses to Day 4 Questions. Only a few questions were asked on that day.

regards

Steve


Talk-2-Safaricom, Day 4 of 6 (Thursday):-Infrastructure & Universal Access
Guideline: Safaricom continues to expand its network beyond urban areas.  What has been your experience of Safaricom services in semi-urban and rural areas of Kenya?


a) Rural area:-Voice quality, InternetAccess(bandwidth), Mobile Money (MPESA)  b) Safaricom contributes to the Universal Service Fund to extend communications to underserved areas- how has this impacted your rural communities

c) The government has the National Optical Fiber Infrastructure, to what extend does Safcom use/not use it and why?d) To provide services to under-served areas, the Universal Service Fund has been provision with Safaricom being the largest contributor, how effective is this fund?



It's a mix of questions and experiences. Floor is open till midnite today on this one. Lets hear you views.

Questions+Comments from Discussions:

Barrack Otieno
Hi Walu,
1. What is Safaricoms policy on Infrastructure sharing?, my question regards Community ISP's that may want to piggy back on its masts. What are the charges and guidelines?
Thanks Barrack, this is a very good question. Safaricom supports infrastructure sharing and we have been hosting (and being hosted) on our competitors infrastructure since we began operations in 1999. Currently we share our towers, BTS rooms, power, fibre and other network elements with our competitors and other organisations.
Safaricom shares infrastructure with Airtel, Telkom Kenya, Multichoice, KWS, KBC, Wananchi, JTL, PANG, Liquid Telecom, Access Kenya and many more. Having said that we believe that all licensees have the obligation of investing and building their networks as required under their licence conditions.

Going back to your question – yes, we’d be able to host community ISPs depending on what elements they want to share which would also determine the cost. This would also be contingent on the ISPs compliance to statutory licences and regulations.

Rosemary Koech

My query is in regards to the  quality of data and voice the quality heavily deteriorates just past major towns and cities. Is there a plan to ensure better service delivery?
Rosemary, we keep this issue top of mind. As you would expect, urban centres tend to have more density when it comes to network coverage to cater for the higher population numbers, however your experience should not be any worse once you leave the major town or city as our coverage is designed to seamlessly cover the majority of the land mass. It would be good if you could share locations for us to review.
We have contracted independent consultants P3 to continuously monitor our network performance and take random drive tests to ensure that we continue to connect our customers. In rural areas, we have embarked on a rollout plan that will see us reconfigure our network to better serve rural customers in the future.

Kevin Kamonye

Do you have/ have you had plans to roll out services in other countries. What are/were the challenges experienced.  I think the current Kenya-only limited market share and the demands of better margins from investors could be the key reason that we are always feeling the pinch of your pricing.  Also, it seems like am getting congestion along Naivasha Rd; calls sometimes take a while to connect or they do so without any ringing tone. More people are moving into the area, kindly see what to do about this and even better 3G (at least) coverage.  Kevin

We are currently only licensed to operate in Kenya and so we cannot share experiences of rollout in other countries at this time. However, as mentioned in a separate response to Sidney and a few others, we currently offer the most compelling pricing for data and voice services and remain the top investor in Kenya in terms of mobile infrastructure to enable us continue to provide cutting edge technologies to our customers.

Our technical team is investigating the Naivasha Road issue.

Grace Bomu
I have seen Safaricom branded trenches in satellite towns such as Kiserian but we are yet to get broadband or services such as Safaricom  box.  Was the fibre exclusively for the security contract?
Grace, you’re right the trenches you have seen are part of our rollout project to deliver fibre in Kiserian. Once we finish in lay the infrastructure our team will return to do the last mile connectivity making it available to end users. For now the concentration has been on getting the fiber to the town.
On the Big Box, this should be available to you. You can buy the decoder from any of our retail shops for Sh4,999 and have the team set it up for you. See http://www.safaricom.co.ke/TheBigBox/ for more information on the box.


Racheal Nakitare
We know Safaricom contributes to USF, but how is the same ploughed back to open up our underserved areas? Has Safaricom attempted to apply for the same funds to improve our poor infrastructure especially in peri urban and rural areas. Are we eligible? Kind regards Racheal.
Racheal – We had answered this question in some length in earlier answers, do let me know if you need any more clarification beyond that response.



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