The CEOs of Kenya’s four mobile operators, Safaricom, Orange Telkom, Airtel and yuMobile, have been warned they could face arrest for failing to disconnect unregistered Sim cards on their networks.
The warning follows reports that police are trying to trace the cellphone number used by the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi last month.
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) says all four operators are guilty of flouting the law that requires all Sim cards be registered before they are activated, despite claims by Orange and Safaricom that they have already complied with government’s demands.
A number of agents selling pre-registered Sim cards have been arrested and face jail terms of up to three years or fines of KSh300 000 (about R35 000).
The CCK claims there are more than 680 000 unregistered Sims that are still active. Operators were on Monday given 48 hours to deactivate all unregistered Sims and ensure none of their agents sell preactivated cards. Source: Daily Nation
EcoCash hits 3m Zim subscribers
Although mobile money solutions have failed to gain traction in most of Southern Africa, despite doing well in East Africa, Zimbabwe’s EcoCash says it has now signed up 3m subscribers and processed US$2,2bn in the two years since launch.
The figure represents 20% of Zimbabwe’s 2012 GDP and 21% of the country’s population. EcoCash hasn’t specified whether its subscriber number refers to registered or active users, but it most likely refers to the former. Source: Techzim
Botswana operator caught out over retrenchments
Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) has had to backtrack on planned retrenchments after a local newspaper report that showed that its so-called restructuring exercise was allegedly a smokescreen for laying off staff without compensation.
BTC is a wholly government-owned parastatal. BTC GM for support services and human relations Joy-Marie Marebole has been fingered in the scandal and reportedly conducted a similar exercise when she worked at Barclays Bank, retrenching a number of employees under the guise of “nonperformance”. Source: Sunday Standard
