CCK stern warning over number portability row

By Kenneth Kwama and Macharia Kamau

Mobile phone industry landscape could drastically change should investigations by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) establish that some of the service providers are sabotaging the newly launched Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service.

The regulator’s Director General Charles Njoroge told Financial Journal in an interview that contrary to public perception that the commission wasn’t 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 that allows subscribers to change service providers without losing their old numbers, the country’s four mobile firms—Safaricom, Airtel, Essar’s yu, and Orange signed agreements, including one that specifies conditions for seamless interconnection.

The agreement gave CCK leeway to punish defaulters, including possible revocation of licenses if an operator was found guilty of breaching the regulations.

During the interview with FJ, Njoroge did not rule out cancellation of licences of any offender.

"We have heard complaints from subscribers and operators saying there is a problem and CCK has been slow to investigate. The truth is that we are on with investigations and will punish saboteurs accordingly," said Njoroge.

Cancellation of licence

Although viewed as extreme, any cancellation of the license of a service provider has potential to reduce the number of mobile companies in operation in Kenya and put the affected company out of business. It would also trigger mass migrations of affected customers to other networks.

This could be the unintended consequence of the rollout of a service that was initially expected to deepen the level of competition in the mobile telecommunications market and enhance consumer choice.

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.

Prior to its rollout, CCK had identified number portability as one of the necessary interventions to enhance a competitive environment.

Benchmark studies carried out by the commission indicates that number portability offers effective intervention in markets that are dominated by single players.

The regulator said introduction of number portability would result in improved quality of service.

"In the new dispensation, service providers who do not pay attention to quality and good customer service may find it hard to survive," said Njoroge.

But this optimism seems to be ebbing out as CCK finds itself fighting a battle to make the new service relevant. Safaricom says its conscience is clear about the porting mess.

"On our part and primarily to address the sporadic claims from some of our competitors and to give comfort to them of our sincerity, we have requested the CCK to consider conducting an impartial audit of the entire process to ensure that any shortcomings in the process are isolated and addressed as soon as possible in the interests of the consumer," says Waita.

But CCK, which has presided over a couple of meetings since the service was launched early last month in a bid to iron out the differences, pledged to ensure the process succeeds.

"We don’t need permission to investigate anyone, we just move in and investigate," said Njoroge.

Safaricom’s director of Corporate Affairs Nzioka Waita says the company has been processing all portability applications under the legal guidelines agreed upon by the CCK and says it is impossible to debate the issue of portability outside the context of the guidelines, which he adds define clearly the obligation operators have to each other.

"As things stand, we have not breached in anyway the legal obligations to which we are bound and we remain fully committed to playing our part in this important process," says Waita.

But Safaricom’s chief rival Airtel Kenya has discounted this account of events saying consumers wishing to port from Safaricom and who had sent an SMS to the short-code with the word ‘Hama’ were being frustrated because their texts do not reach the database of the company contracted to oversee the process-Porting Access Kenya Ltd.

"Once a customer successfully ports out of Safaricom in most cases the customer is cut off from communication with other consumers on the Safaricom network," claimed Airtel Kenya’s managing director Rene Meza.

Meza had issued a strongly-worded statement accusing Safaricom of employing anti-competition tactics.

"How do you explain several complaints received from customers who have opted to move their number to Airtel from Safaricom being unable to receive calls from Safaricom numbers for several days while they are able to communicate on all platforms on the Airtel network with the same number?" questioned Meza.

Frustration

Last week, Porting Access Kenya claimed Safaricom was frustrating subscribers seeking to switch to other networks.

"The problem lies with Safaricom," Porting Access Kenya Ltd chairman Patrick Musimba said while giving a progress report on the service. "They are not allowing ports to go through."

He said the move was against the International Telecommunications Union guidelines on provision of telecommunications service and flouted licensing conditions.

Waita told FJ on the sidelines of a media workshop last week that Safaricom had written to Porting Access BV of Netherlands, which owns 80 per cent stake in the local affiliate asking it to compel Musimba to withdraw some unsavoury remarks he had made about it in an interview with a local media house.

Initial projections had shown that the company needed to process at least 300,000 ports a year, for it to break even. Last week, the firm released data showing that since April 1, when the service was launched, it had received 43,545 port requests.

However Musimba says many requests remain blocked while short messages to 1501 were not going through while others were already timed out.

"The bulk of SMSs for port requests are pending, 34 per cent, while about 26 per cent are timed out," he said. Musimba’s report shows that about 43,000 subscribers, majority of them from Safaricom, had sent requests to port to Airtel.

After the commencement of the porting service on April 1, operators introduced a number of offers to tempt customers to port from rival firms.

Airtel Kenya waived the Sh173 fee for those opting to join its network. The firm is also offering 1,000 free Airtel Zawadi points and another 25 per cent bonus on airtime top-ups of any amount for a period of three months.

Safaricom reacted by offering Sh120 airtime, 50 Bonga points and 10MB worth of monthly data for four months in an effort to woo customers from other networks.