Wednesday, March 23, 2011

April 1 it is for the number portability

Further to my earlier post on the forthcoming number portability that is due to start starts in 10 days, it is now official that subscribers will have to pay to switch operators at a one-off fee of KES. 173 (USD 2.03). 

The four mobile phone operators in the country — Safaricom, Airtel Kenya, Telkom Kenya and Essar Telecom Kenya Ltd, trading as yu — started technical trials on Friday last week.

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) said the operators were ready for the launch.

Porting Access Kenya Ltd, the firm carrying out the project, is targeting 300,000 ports (number of subscribers switching operators) a year.

The first step is to inform your current and new operator of the intention to switch. The next move would be to surrender your SIM card to the current provider and acquire another SIM card from the new network.

The service will be activated within two working days after paying the porting fee to the provider facilitating the transfer. However, it would take at least 60 days before switching networks again.

For instance, those leaving Safaricom would lose the value added services subscribed for earlier such as M-Pesa. However, they would tap into the services in the new network.

Already Safaricom is on the warpath in a bid to retain its customers, and is offering the cheapest post paid options such as PostPay100 where a subscriber paying KES 1,000 (approx. USD 11.83) is entitles to 900 minutes in-network calls, 100 minutes out-of-network calls, 100 smses in-network and 100 MB data bundle; to the PostPay2500 that entitles you to 2,200 minutes in-network calls, 300 minutes out-of-network calls, 250 smses in-network and 100 MB data.

Do not forget too that Safaricom now is charging Blackberry subscribers only KES. 999 for usage per month!

Over to you Airtel and others for your better options!

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