Mobile Service Providers to Share Telecommunication Towers with Competitors

By Virginia Nyambura

Mobile service providers will share telecommunication towers with competitors, in the seven semi-arid counties in Northern Kenya, if proposals at the Attorney General’s office by the Communications Authority go through.

“We have proposed a series of regulations that are currently in the Attorney General’s office, including one that will facilitate infrastructure sharing,” said the Communications Authority (CA) director, Mr. Francis Wangusi while addressing the National Assembly’s committee on Information, Communication, and Technology.

The Kenya Communications Authority (CA) while aiming to secure market dominance in the telecommunication sector is also seeking powers to license all mobile money agents.

“The agents are going to be licensed to check misuse of information provided by mobile operators,” Mr. Wangusi said, adding that the registration seeks to make the agents neutral so that they can serve the telecom operators.

Safaricom which is the leading telecoms operator has 160,000 agents for its M-Pesa while Airtel money has 30,000 and 7,000 for Telkom’s T-Kash.

He spoke in parliament while presenting a report on telecommunication competition where he noted that that the proposals had been lying somewhere for the past two years.

He told the parliamentarians that once the rules became operational, restricting agents from selling other providers’ products would be punishable as provided by the provisions of the Competition Act.

“We are transacting about 1.9 shillings in trillions on a network that controls 90 percent of the mobile money services. The danger is that if it collapses for two days, there will be a serious impact on the economy and even to national security,” noted the director.

The CA has been conducting a market review and has identified five retail markets and eight wholesale markets in the sector where interventions are required.

Geoffrey Otsotsi, nominated MP, demanded to know if the CA had conducted a survey on the economic impact of the competition.

Mr. Wangusi told MPs that the CA board has not adopted the survey report because the committee demanded that its input is considered.