after losing out on a vicious dirty and unprofessional war (which the sparing partner refused to participate in) one gruntled player , red in the face (literaly) is crying foul and rushing to the regulator to complain that the partner is being unfair. yaani playing too well! its like pitting harambee stars and brazil in a match and complaining later to fifa that brazil fielded their best stars and used too advanced formations!
i dont really know what to make of celtel's complaints. these guys have been hitting direclty on safaricom. talking about their congestion, their high prices and so on. some of their adverts were outragiuosly negative and an insult to safaricom. however safaricom chose to be mum over all that and instead of responding to those attacks, they kept up the pace and developed more products for their loyal customers. its not lost to anyone that celtel announced that indeed 1 million customers had crossed over in one month. the truth was that technicaly thats imposible. the switch technology cannot handle that many transfers in one month. the truth was that 750K subscribers within celtel simply swaped tariffs. but celtel is known for its unending insults. just last year they erected a large billboard right in front of safaricom offices. in fact it was in their staff parking! safaricom did not answer them back. they then organised their caravan to pass in front of safaricom and had pple dance and throw stuff into the safaricom compound. the giant still was not aroused. so after making noise all over they have decided to go and ask the referee to award them a penalty!
i think celtels leadership should sit down and rework their strategy instead of crying foul. am told that most decisions are made in amsterdam and then sent to kenya for implementation. while in safaricom adverts you meet pple u can easily relate with, celtels 'pan african' adverts are strangely foreign. even the accent is quite funny. and again, i dont know whether they ever do a market survey. do they really know what customers want?
kenyan investment advisor : Hey rush , buy, the stock is skyrocketing ,,,, hey rush , sell, the stock is heading down south!
odegle tip of the day ... any investent whose returns are lower than the risk free return. in this case the govts treasury bills or bonds is not worth your while
U have captured the Kenyan Investment Advisor very well...
ReplyDeleteBTW... I am no Celtel fan... coz of merali...
ReplyDeleteBUT... the question may be of high interconnection charges that hinder cross-network calls.
Odegle:
ReplyDeleteI am glad to have read your post about Celtel. Isn't Celtel the same company that used to be owned by Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim?
If it is, this post sheds some light, I had wondered what would happen to them after being sold to a foreign company by their founder. Looks like, you have answered it...
Thanks.
Coldtusker:
Hi, who/what's merali? Also, how have you been doing? Feel free to drop me a line, eh?
merali is a crony of moi... check my blog for more details...
ReplyDeleteM doing OK
coldi ... hehee. anyway i agree the high interconnection charges hinder cross network calls, but i guess they should have seen that before setting their charges at 16 /=
ReplyDeleteBenin ...celtel was actually sold to a kuwaiti but merali still has some substantial holding. merali is a kenyan investor who used to be the 'who' during moi
However childish Celtel seems, they do have a point.
ReplyDeleteWhat they are asking for is similar to "Local Loop Unbundling" in Europe and US. It means that you can't charge exhorbitant interconnection fees to keep customers locked into your network and maintain your monopoly position
The CCK should step in and force BOTH to only charge each other for the actual cost of the calls (or up to a fixed percent above) and then we would see prices going down for real instead of silly marketing tricks.
It would have the additional benefit of creating an incentive to roll out network in new areas instead of setting up their stupid towers next to each other.
very good input there singh, do you think that these two operators could be having a hand in the tribulations of the likes of econet, vtel and now reliance? i think its not enough for safcom to lower interconect rates, more players need to be in the market.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel much for safaricom, let Celtel go on excelling. The network is very clear, rarely congested, and what they promise actually works (Internet using the phone, etc) while Safaricom will bill you for things you haven't activated, and never refund you!
ReplyDeleteSafaricom has been operating like it owns the cellphone industry.. and even tho Celtel has been on a smear campaign against them, don't you remember when they were KENCELL and Safaricom did the same?
it would be nice if CCK would step in and regulate, but I doubt their effectiveness, since Safcom has government backing (Telkom) and Celtel is a more private firm.
Well im not really on anyones side here......coz i gat nothin to lose or gain..
ReplyDeleteI am a safcom subscriber....
The bs i find is that when u gotta make that important call .... the network is jammed. The CS is incompetent. Im a post paid customer and i have travelled abit... and safcom is the only company (in the world) that has cheaper prepaid tarrifs as compared to contract tarrifs....
I believe i paid for a service and i should get my money's worth. Dont know much about celtel...
Another thing, I realised that as kenyans....the customer service we get is horrible...be it banks,shops, phone companies, elec etc......they treat us like trash..... U agree?
anon .. when it comes to customer care. i agree totaly. we get very poor service down here. safaricom used to be very good but these days you simply cannot get through to the customer care desk. however they have installed the IVR but still that has not solved their problem.
ReplyDeletewhy dont u talk about the customer services as a topic.the more people discuss it the more we wil avoid certain companies.not to malign but just cold hard facts about wat we experience in kenya
ReplyDelete