Elias Mwangi, CEO, Elige Communications Limited, at his Westlands office on March 11, 2022. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG Two long-time friends who had travelled out of the country had difficulty calling each other and their families back home due to exorbitant roaming charges.
Out of their frustration came an alternative telephone service that works off an existing internet connection.
Armed with Sh11 million in own savings, Elias Mwangi and George Mukenya started Elige Communications -a voice over internet protocol (VOIP) service provider- that allows calls to be made at 60 percent less than on telco networks.
“Call rates are not pegged on subscribers’ geographical location, meaning that even those in the diaspora still use the service as if they are in Kenya,” said Mr Mwangi, 35, an IT graduate from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Active users
Elige, which started in 2014, operates from Westlands, Nairobi and recently unveiled an application dubbed Ambia offering its over 80,000 active users a consistent platform for calls.
Introducing the app was also partly in compliance with subscriber registration requirements of the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA).
To be connected to the Elige network, a customer downloads the app on Google playstore or Apple store on their phone, then registers as they would for a sim card.
Upon successful registration, a subscriber gets a unique number bearing Elige prefixes including 02056, 02057, 02058, and 02059.
As a way of dealing with fraudulent subscriber registrations, Ambia has a functionality that compares the face on someone’s ID to a picture captured in real time.
“This enables us to confirm that the person submitting the information is actually the person on the ID,” says Mr Mukenya, 38.
But their entrepreneurship journey has not been without setbacks. The two have had to fiercely fight incumbents with some of their disputes ending up in courts just to earn a seat at the telcos table.The fight for recognition as a VOIP provider has been the fiercest with one telco “devising unfair practices” that have eaten into Elige’s revenues, slowing down expansion.First, it was the telco’s hesitation to sign interconnect agreements with the start-up to govern how business will be carried out between parties.Then followed the dropping of calls coming from Elige, with the telco alleging that they are international calls yet they are internet originated calls.In 2018, the CA fined Safaricom Sh449 million for failing to connect calls made to smaller telecommunications firms […]