Telcoms regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya has pressured tower operator Eaton to restore services to Telkom Kenya after they switched off services due to a dispute.
“In order to cushion Telkom customers from further agony, the authority ordered Eaton Towers to restore the services by midnight December 13 2019 or risk regulatory sanctions. The services have since been restored,” the authority said in a statement to Business Daily.
The regulator ordered the companies to resolve their dispute provided for in the licensing conditions to prevent interruption of services.
Eaton switched off 49 sites which affected 70 base transmitter stations that cut off users in several parts of the country.
Eaton Towers is a tower company with over 5500 tower sites in 5 African nations that include Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Niger. Their major customers also include the likes of Bharti Airtel, MTN, Vodafone, Orange and Etisalat.
Interruption of services for a telco is not good for the economy and for the health of the brand and that is why the CA had to step in to resolve the dispute.
This finally answers Telkom Kenya’s acknowledgment last week when they said they were experiencing ‘service interruptions’. They had not specifed why there were experiencing the network issues and now we have the answer. Telkom customers from around the country were experiencing a host of issues thanks to the interruption and in some cases, some people had issues lasting a whole week.
This notice also comes days after the Competion Authority of Kenya approved the merger of Telkom Kenya and Airtel. This is aimed to strengthen them and compete even better with the market leader, Safaricom.
