Upgrade your network first, Safaricom tells Zain Kenya

Written By:O'Brien Kimani , Posted: Thu, Aug 19, 2010

The war of words between Kenya's largest mobile operators escalated Thursday with Safaricom rubbishing claims that it was jamming calls coming from the Zain network.

Safaricom says Zain should blame itself for not upgrading its systems before cutting its call rates on Wednesday.

Zain had complained to the Communication Commission of Kenya alleging that Safaricom was jamming calls from Zain to its network.

Zain asked the regulator to stop Safaricom from "abusing dominance" by offering only limited capacity for cross network calls coming from its network.

CCK director general Charles Njoroge confirmed that the regulator had received complains from Zain Kenya and the commission was looking into the matter.

In a statement to newsrooms Safaricom alleged that under the current agreement between the two operators they are supposed to notify each other about any impending capacity increase seven days beforehand.

The statement says Zain notified Safaricom about the impending capacity increase only on Wednesday night leaving Safaricom at a loss.

On Wednesday Zain slashed its off-net calls by fifty percent resulting to a huge volume of traffic on other networks especially Safaricom.