Airtel wants the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) to honour the law and declare Safaricom the dominant player in Kenya’s telecommunication’s sector
Safaricom owns a massive chunk of the market share at 64%, followed by Airtel at 27% and Telkom Kenya at 7%
CAK has also been accused of skewed allocation of mobile spectrum in favour of Safaricom
The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has been accused of refusing to acknowledge Safaricom PLC’s dominance in the country, as required by the law. Airtel shop in India. Photo: Mobile Wolrd Live. Source: UGC In a petition to Parliament, rival Airtel Networks Kenya, which holds a 27% market share against Safaricom’s 64% and Telkom Kenya’s 7%, said there has been a reluctance in declaring the giant telco dominant in the retail mobile market and retail mobile money market. “There has been no dispute as to the status of Safaricom as regards its dominance status and significant market power,” Airtel told the ICT committee of the Senate. As per the Competition Act, a telecommunications firm should be declared dominant if it has a 50% market share.
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As reported by Business Daily, Airtel argued that declaring Safaricom a dominant player is not punishing success but rectifying any market anomalies in the country. Spectrum allocation
Airtel also called out CAK for skewed allocation of mobile spectrum in favour of Safaricom.
The Authority was also blamed for failing to reduce telco’s fees for interconnecting calls. “Despite investing heavily in the network to improve customer experience, we continue to grapple with lack of spectrum in 4G/LTE which as advised by the Authority is unavailable, yet the dominant player holds excessive spectrum,” the telco said. According to Airtel’s petition, the telco has been allocated 50 MHz of the spectrum compared to 82.5 MHz for Safaricom and 37.5 MHz for Telkom Kenya. Digitisation
In a separate story, TUKO.co.ke reported business digitization has led to increased adoption of mobile money services in Kenya.
In September, a report released by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) revealed that the total number of active registered mobile money subscriptions rose by 4.7% to 34.7 million between April and June 2021.
During the period under review, the number of agents grew to 283,357 from 275,907 recorded during the previous quarter. “The year-on-year comparison showed a significant growth […]