7 November 2009
editorial
Nairobi — Hardly a day goes by without news of vandalism in the fledgling overland fibre optic system. Last week was particularly bad for both Internet and voice operators whose customers had to endure long spells of service outages.
Rather unfortunately, Kenyans have hardly started enjoying the benefits of cheap broadband before this wave of criminality hit telecoms systems countrywide. It is plausible that the miscreants can reverse the early gains in this field even as authorities stand by.
What baffles the average mind is why sabotage, as claimed by nearly all operators, has all of a sudden come into vogue. Safaricom and Zain (in its various incarnations) have fought a relatively disciplined commercial war that has consequently fostered one of the most phenomenal growths in the telecommunications business anywhere on earth.
What has changed? Have we let in unconscionable players with no reputation to lose into the industry? What kind of money is flowing into this sector? Do we have integrity problems to contend with?
These are some of the questions which the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) and, to a lesser extent, the Monopolies and Prices Commission, should provide convincing answers. Sadly, both have opted to clam up even as clients suffer enormous economic losses.
The police, and precisely the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), should tag these criminals and put an end to this economic sabotage that threatens to squander the billions invested in the telecoms sector by both public and private players.
Indeed, given the kind of anti-competitive behaviour we are witnessing in this economically sensitive sector, it is only a matter of time before it becomes necessary to vet investors in this sector, not to mention their top executives.
Unlike in areas like Nairobi Stock Exchange and the banking industry where such measures have been formulated, the telecommunications sector is open to all manner of characters, and the result of the consequences might be what we are witnessing.
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