Nairobi — Safaricom customers will now be able to keep their lines active for a period of up to two years without topping up.

This is after the telco unveiled the Daima service which will offer packages that range from six months to two years, allowing customers to keep their lines active during long periods of inactivity.

The service seeks to address the challenge of inactive lines for customers who may be traveling or living abroad for long periods, are away at school, or are away at police and army training.

Other customers are faced with a change of ownership of a line due to the loss of a loved one, others are inactive due to a car tracking service or have multiple lines that they wish to keep active.

According to the country's telecommunication regulations, a customer needs to have used a provider's service within the previous 90 days to be considered active.

Telecommunication operators are required to reissue inactive customer lines.

"We are yet again innovating around our customers' needs by introducing solutions such as Daima that are modelled around the lifestyles of our customers," said Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom CEO.

Daima will offer three packages starting from Sh200 for six months, Sh500 for 1 year, and Sh 1,000 for two years.

Each option will provide 20 minutes of calling time and 20 SMS across all networks every month.

Customers can access Daima by dialing *100*4# and selecting the Daima option and through the MySafaricom App in the coming weeks.

The new service comes barely two weeks after the Communication Authority of Kenya switched off unregistered lines seeing telcos lose some of their subscribers.

As of October 13, Safaricom was leading with the number of registered clients with 38 million (91 per cent) followed by Airtel 13.4 million (48 per cent) and Telkom Kenya 1.8 million (40 percent).