Safaricom Now Sues Porting Access Kenya Chairman

Mobile phone operators, Safaricom and Airtel are locked in the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) wars again this month and the bone of contention this time is the neutrality of Porting Access which provides the porting services. Safaricom praises the “professionalism of CCK and its patience in the implementation of MNP”. The dominant mobile operator says that CCK has been more consultative in seeking to solve the problems.

Airtel accuses Safaricom of being a hindrance to the implementation of MNP and alleges that CCK cannot act in this case because Safaricom has called its bluff. CCK cannot punish Safaricom which has more than 17 Million users on its table. Punishing Safaricom will be affecting more than  75% of the telecommunications clients in Kenya.

Safaricom believes that Airtel is engaging in Media side-shows while Airtel accuses Safaricom of wrongly targeting Porting Access. Safaricom has instructed its lawyers to sue Porting Access Kenya and the person of its chairman, Patrick Musimba, for alleging that it is sabotaging the porting process and allegedly calling the Safaricom CEO a “cyber terrorist”. Safaricom also says that Porting Access has lost the technical and moral capacity to implement the porting process.

Porting Access Kenya chairman Mr Musimba has said that he has not seen the Safaricom suite and would only comment on it after he is served with it. Safaricom claims that only 28,140 clients have put in requests to move to other networks while Porting Access put the figure at close to 45,000. Airtel recieved the highest requests at 43,000, Safaricom at close to 1,000, Orange at 50 and yu at 200. Funnily Porting Access said that so far Safaricom had allowed only 11,000 clients to move to Airtel against a request of 43,000 while Safaricom also seems to agree with the data which today stands at 13,525.

Safaricom funnily refers to Porting Access as a “commission-hunter” and claims that the company collude and coordinate attacks on Safaricom with Airtel. Safaricom alleged that Bharti Airtel pays for Porting Access press conference venues and the tones of attack by both Airtel and Porting Access bears a similarity.

Safaricom also says that Porting Access has lost the position of being a moral and impartial broker in the whole porting process and so wants CCK to review the role of Porting XS BV of Netherlands and specifically Porting Access in the administration of mobile number portability (MNP).

but in a quick rejoinder, Airtel stated that Safaricom was trying to divert attentions from its weaknesses and mistakes and wants attention focused on Porting Access “who have implemented the system effectively”.

Airtel states that “Safaricom tariffs were exorbitantly high until Airtel came to the rescue of customers by offering them affordable tariffs” as the brand launched into the Kenyan market. The company states that Safaricom is working against the Kenyans by overcharging them and demanding that the regulator maintain high inter-connection rates against the wishes of even the government of Kenya.

Airtel Kenya CEO says that Safaricom is a Vodafone company which has implemented porting in many other markets. Rene Meza says that the major problem lies in Safaricom clearly sabotaging clients who wants to port and those who have ported. Clients who have ported to other networks from Safaricom are not able to receive SMS, international calls and even some local calls.

Mr. Meza also added that Porting Access is the best in the world at this process but require operator co-operation to be able to do the job effectively.