Telkom Kenya wants CCK to foot repair bill for vandalised cables

By Macharia Kamau

Telecommunication services providers have raised alarm about the rise in cable vandalism, saying it is now a threat to the entire economy, and casts doubt on achievement of Vision 2030.

Telkom Kenya said it is on average experiencing 45 cuts per month, an alarmingly high rate, that it said threatens industry players that are heavily dependent on bandwidth, like business process outsourcing. The BPO industry has been earmarked as among key sectors to drive Kenya into a middle-income economy over the next two decades.

The firm now wants Communications Commission of Kenya to reimburse the money its remits to the regulator for the Universal Access Fund to use in repair of fibre optic cable networks that it says have become a costly expense.

A cable cut Monday brought the operations of two BPO centres handling international business to a halt. It also affected the Mater Hospital, as well as voice and data traffic for one of the mobile phone operators.

"The cable vandals are terrorists to the economy, and unless we sort this out early, the country’s development goals of Vision 2030 will remain a dream. Operators cannot offer quality services under such an operating environment," said.

Repairing cuts

"It is affecting the cost and quality of services as we end up spending substantially in repairing the cuts and barely able to plough back. Given that this is an industry issue, vandalism will definitely slow down penetration of ICT services."

In addition to money spent repairing cable cuts, the firm has lost business worth Sh2 billion this year alone, due to cable cut, and now wants the Government to foot the repair bill for failure to provide security

Ghossein said the Government should take responsibility for failure to provide security of ICT infrastructure, and reimburse money ICT service providers pay to CCK to fund universal access projects so that they can deal with constant repair works that have become a costly expense.

"We will make a formal request to CCK to reimburse some of the money that we contribute to the Universal Access kitty so that we can be able to deal with vandalism," he said.

Large firms in the ICT industry remit one per cent of their revenues to the Universal Access fund established by CCK. The money is supposed to go towards deepening penetration of ICT services and funds projects like community digital centres as well as assisting operators at expanding into uneconomically viable areas.