Safaricom files a lawsuit against Porting Access Kenya
Safaricom has filed a case at the High Court registry, looking to restrain the porting agent from publishing statements which accuse it of sabotaging the mobile number portability process.
Porting Access Kenya was responsible for managing the number portability service launched in Kenya in April.
Safaricom accuses Porting Access Kenya and its chairman Patrick Musimba of publishing or causing to be published statements defamatory to it and wants it stopped from publishing the statements until the suit is heard and determined.
The mobile operator has supplied clippings of media reports citing Musimba to the court, according to a sworn statement filed. Safaricom has maintained that the hitches experienced during porting were not unique to Safaricom subscribers alone but were also being faced by those of other operators.
Safaricom donates $59,455 for Heart Run (Kenya)
Safaricom has donated $59,455 towards the 2011 edition of the Mater Heart Run which takes place on 14 May.
The hospital is targeting to raise US$356,730 in aid of children with heart conditions.
The money will go to heart surgery for 230 children across the country. Last year, the event raised US$305,598, providing operations for 210 children. Over 25,000 participants took part in the walk.
Kenya govt monitors SMS, internet for hate speech
Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission has announced that it has been monitoring text messages and internet-based communication for any clues of hate speech and incitement.
According to Commissioner Halakhe Waqo, the Commission partnered with local mobile operators and government security agencies about a year ago,
The monitoring has also extended to Kenyans in Diaspora as NCIC gets tough ahead of the 2012 General Election, less than 20 months away.
It means that the Commission may have obtained several telephone records of people suspected of sending hate messages from local companies with the assistance of the Cyber-Crime Unit at the Criminal Investigation Department.
He added that adequate steps have been taken to safeguard individual privacy, unless it breaches national security and peaceful co-existence.
The partnership with the police and phone firms that started about a year ago is helping to ease the NCIC’s inherent human and technical resource deficiencies that would have otherwise hindered monitoring phone and internet-based communication.
Earlier this year in March, NCIC Chairman Mzalendo Kibunjia stated that the Commission was monitoring hate speech posted on social networks as well as commentaries on news websites.
Kibunjia explained that the commission had recruited 40 new staff, who report to the commission in April. He stated that Facebook, Twitter and such networks will be their main focus.
Orange offers two SMS-based e-health projects in Africa
Orange has launched two SMS-based e-health operations in Cameroon, which it intends to spread throughout its footpring on the continent and in the Middle East.
The first, with Dutch NGO Text To Change, uses text messaging to raise awareness and provide an alert system on child exploitation.
Orange and Text to Change will launch a survey on child trafficking and sexual exploitation by sending SMS messages containing facts and questions to around 200,000 Orange subscribers in western Cameroon.
Feedback from the survey will then be used by the International Circle for the protection of creation (CIPCRE) to broadcast a series of educational radio programmes on the issue aimed at challenging taboos surrounding this widespread problem.
In parallel, a free SMS reporting system will be set-up, allowing people to report cases of child abuse anonymously. This initiative, which is awaiting regulatory approval, is due to start up in May 2011.
The second initiative, in partnership with mPedigree and launching in both Cameroon and Kenya, intends to develop an SMS system enabling people to verify the authenticity of their medicines.
MPedigree is a pan-African organisation operating through partnerships in the telecom, pharmaceutical and computing industries. The project involves printing a unique verification code, which is hidden behind a scratchable surface layer, on each packet or bottle of medicine.
Patients can then submit this code via SMS in order to automatically check the authenticity of the drug against a database managed in Europe by mPedigree’s partners.
Vodafone Qatar launches international calls at $0.17
Vodafone Qatar’s World Calling Club is offering international call rates to more than 190 countries for US$0.17 a minute.
Calling destinations included in this promotion are Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Iran, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, US and Yemen.
Vodafone is also running a promotion on its International Calling Card 25 that gives customers 46 minutes of talk time to 15 popular destinations at a rate of QAR 0.14 a minute. Both promotions run until the end of May.
Safaricom to sue Porting Access Kenya
Safaricom is planning to sue Porting Access Kenya Ltd – administrators of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) – for what it calls defamation and economic sabotage.
According to Nzioka Waita, Safaricom’s Corporate Affairs Director, they shall do all in their power to protect their interests and the overall reputation of Safaricom, which has been painstakingly built over the years.
The company is also demanding completion of the audit that Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) began after complaints about the technical hitches affecting portability.
It has also appealed to the CCK to review the role of Porting XS BV of The Netherlands and its local partner, Porting Access, in the administration of MNP.
Waita added that they believe they have lost the moral and legal legitimacy to position themselves as an honest and impartial broker of porting.
CCK launches investigation on MNP delays (Kenya)
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has launched investigations into claims that some companies are sabotaging the recently launched mobile number portability (MNP) service.
According to the regulator’s Director General Charles Njoroge, contrary to the public perception that the commission was not doing anything to sort out the porting mess, it had actually launched investigations into claims that some companies were subverting porting services.
Before the launch of the service, Safaricom, Airtel, Yu and Orange signed agreements, including one that specifies conditions for seamless interconnection. The agreement gives the CCK leeway to punish defaulters, including possible revocation of licences if an operator was found guilty of breaching the regulations.
Njoroge did not rule out cancellation of licences of any offender. He stated that the CCK has heard complaints from subscribers and operators saying there is a problem and CCK has been slow to investigate.
Mobile firms have been pointing fingers at each other over a backlog of porting requests, which have effectively grounded services. The intervention by CCK comes in the wake of a simmering row between the two main operators, Safaricom and Airtel, with the latter accusing Safaricom of blocking calls to numbers that have ported from its network.
Airtel to raise $1 bn to cut African debt (India)
Bharti Airtel is planning to raise US$750 million to US$1 billion through a global bond issue to retire its Africa debt and fund expansion there.
The issue will be in the form of debentures and will have tenure of ten years, the official, who has direct knowledge of the development, said on condition of anonymity.
According to the officials, the proposal will be put up before the company’s board on 4 May, when it meets to discuss results for the financial year-ended 11 March. The proposal is expected to be cleared during the meeting. Banks and individuals in the global market will subscribe the debentures.
The official added that the final amount to be raised will depend on the interest rate the company gets and the response from promotional roadshows.
Airtel had earlier stated that it would prepay by March about US$900 million of the US$7.5 billion loan it took from banks to fund its acquisition of the African assets of Zain Telecom.
The buy expanded Airtel’s operations by both customers and revenues to nineteen countries stretching across South Asia to Africa. Airtel’s spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s plans to sell its first overseas bond. An industry executive said that Airtel’s debt included that in several African countries including Nigeria, and that these high inflation economies had high interest rates.
Airtel had set a target of US$5 billion in revenues and US$2 billion in EBIDTA for the year-ended March 2013 for its loss-making Africa businesses, and analysts remain divided if the company can achieve these targets. The telecommunication has cleared regulatory issues such as reduced termination rates in Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya.
It is also hiving off its towers business into a separate company and plans to form a joint venture with other operators on the lines of Indus Towers, a three-way JV between Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Airtel. Airtel has outsourced the management of its networks to Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and Huawei and has handed over management of its IT functions in Africa to IBM.
Safaricom accused of delaying port requests (Kenya)
Porting Access Kenya is reportedly blaming Safaricom, for frustrating subscribers seeking to switch networks under the mobile number portability service.
Porting Access Kenya chairman Patrick Musimba gave a progress report and said the problem lie with Safaricom. Porting Access said it has received 43,545 port requests between 1 and 27 April.
However, according to Musimba, many requests remained blocked, short messages to 1501 were not going through while others timed out.
Around 34 percent of SMSs for port requests are pending while about 26 percent are timed out. The report also showed about 43,000 subscribers wanting to port to Airtel, the majority of them from Safaricom. Of these, only 10,000 have been successful, 15,000 are pending while 11,000 timed out. According to the data, 450 out of 900 mobile phone users who have requested to join Safaricom have had successful port-ins with the rest either timed out or awaiting SMS approval.
Orange Kenya’s Orange has attracted 40 requests with 25 live while Essar Telecom’s Yu has so far had more than 200 requests with about 80 being successful. Safaricom disputed claims that it was blocking subscribers from porting, arguing that even users who have requested to port to its network were experiencing delays.
Airtel Kenya seeks to withdraw charges against Director ?
Airtel Kenya is seeking to have charges against its MD Rene Meza withdrawn before a court.
Lawyer for the mobile operator Boniface Ndumia stated that the Nakuru resident magistrate Elizabeth Tanui that the firm was in the process of finalising an electronic fund transfer of US$6,34,632 it owes the Nakuru Municipal Council.
This is following orders by Tanui for the MD to appear before her this week to answer to charges of defaulting on council rate payments. When the case came up for mention Ndumia informed Tanui that his clients had wired the cash it owed the council into the local authority’s account.
Airtel is accused of failure to pay the Nakuru Municipal Council up to US$66,308 as rates for wall branding advertisements.
