CCK Inaction on MNP Complaints, Airtel Cries Foul and Safaricom Hits Back

Airtel and Safaricom are still into this back-n-forth over Mobile Number Portability. Airtel claims that Safaricom is blocking clients who want to port to Airtel from doing so and even those who have ported are not getting calls or even SMSes from Safaricom network. Porting Access chairman, Patrick Musimba, was yesterday quoted to have viciously attacked even the person of Safaricom’s CEO, Bob Collymore, and the mobile phone operator is not happy with the way porting access is handling issues.

So what are the claims from Safaricom, Porting Access and Airtel?

Complaints from Airtel Against Safaricom;

• Safaricom is not allowing clients who want to port from it to Airtel not to do so. SMSes to 1501 from Safaricom lines wishing to port not being allowed through.
• The few successful cases of porting from Safaricom to Airtel have come at a great price with the clients not able to receive some local and international calls from Safaricom. SMSes are also not going through.
• Issues raised with CCK are not addressed in time and when operators have promised to look into the issues, none have been acted upon.
• Safaricom frustrating the whole process and the consumers blame the recipient network which is Airtel since they are not privy to the real issues.
• Safaricom blamed Airtel for different form while Airtel gives the correct form. CCK was suppose to do client education.

Safaricom’s Complaints against Airtel

• Airtel not raised any issue which it has not addressed. Why run to the media.
• Airtel is not disclosing to clients who wish to port what they would gain and loose from the whole activity.
• Airtel is street porting and also informing clients that their M-Pesa
• Lies from Airtel. Like Airtel claimed one day that there were 6,500 clients who were barred from porting while on the same day only 1,700 clients actually requested to port to Airtel.
• Requests to port from Airtel to Safaricom not being processed

Safaricom Complaints against Porting Access

• The manager, Mr Patrick Musimba, has no respect for Safaricom CEO calling him a cyber terrorist
• Porting access never done porting anywhere with financial services involved
• Porting access has never done porting without atleast 6 weeks testing
• Porting Access is not a neutral body to handle any of the issues. Without anyone moving, Porting Access will be in real trouble.

Porting Access Complaints against Safaricom

• Safaricom engaging in sabotage
• Safaricom is daring CCK that with 17 Million Kenyan on its network, CCK can do nothing about it.
• Safaricom going against ITU guidelines on provision of telecommunications services
• Safaricom flouting licensing conditions and CCK is just not able to act

I have taken and listened to claims from each of the operators well enough. So I decided to check on what the actual experience is. I bought 4 Airtel SIM cards, 4 Safaricom SIM Cards, 4 Yu and 4 Orange SIM cards. My experience is that we have serious issues which needs to be addressed. If CCK will not stamp its foot on all these, the market will actually not recover much.

There is sometimes none delivery of SMS to 1501 both from Airtel and Safaricom but 3 out of 4 in Safaricom. Migration of 3 lines from Orange to Safaricom succeeded while one failed even on delivery of SMS to 1501. Migration frrom Airtel to Safaricom failed on one line. Migration from Yu to the operators worked out well except for one migration from Yu to Orange which failed.

There also seems to be a very deliberate misinformation of consumers by the operators. We got this evidence shared by Safaricom and it forms part of Safaricom’s complaints against Airtel regarding MNP. Maqbul and Cess Mutungi are heard here lying to two ignorant porting clients that they can get money which was in their M-Pesa on Zap. It can be a slip of the tongue but this is seriously not right.

Listen in and leave your comments below.

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