Telkom Kenya loses an alarming number of customers – here’s why
Between March of last year and June of this year, Telkom Kenya, the third-largest telecom in the nation, lost 1.62 million users as a result of the most recent crackdown on SIM cards that were improperly registered.
The telecom has 2.25 million active members as of June, down 39% from 4.14 million subscribers in March of the previous year, according to an examination of official statistics.
Beginning in April of last year, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) began deactivating SIM cards that were not routinely registered, the most recent in a series of operations that have been periodically carried out since 2013.
Telkom Kenya is the only telecom that saw customer losses after the crackdown, making it more difficult for it to compete with market leader Safaricom and the second-largest company in the sector, Airtel.
“The slow growth in mobile subscriptions during the year is attributed to the SIM registration exercise that kicked off in February 2022 with a deadline of October 2022 which resulted in the deactivation of unregistered SIM cards,” the CA says in the latest industry report.
With Safaricom and Airtel vying for the local telecom market, Telkom has battled over the years to stay up. The decline in active users will have a substantial impact on their income from calls, SMS, and mobile money transactions, among other things.
In the reviewed period, Equitel and Jamii Telecom added 264,890 active subscribers, bringing their total to 1.91 million as of June.
Following the CA’s mandate, telcos were compelled to re-register their subscribers by updating their information and uploading a digital passport-size photo of the consumer.
The CA claims that SIM cards with irregular registration are used to commit crimes like money laundering, abduction, threatening calls, cybercrime, and mobile money fraud.
After the Westgate Mall incident in September 2013, the government tightened the regulations and penalties for using unregistered SIM cards and those that are improperly registered.
The attack was coordinated by terrorists using unregistered SIM cards, which prompted the CA to launch a crackdown the following year.
For street sellers, breaking the SIM card registration laws carries a maximum punishment of Ksh500,000 ($3,360) or a year in jail, or both; mobile carriers are subject to fines up to Ksh5 million ($33,602).
