Network service provider, Safaricom, experienced more than one hour of the outage this morning that affected voice calls, data, M-Pesa and Enterprise services. Subscribers were caught unawares by the unusual outage that affected operations, including businesses that significantly rely on the internet.
Safaricom, which is Kenya’s dominant mobile telecommunications company with 27.7 million subscribers, accounting for 80.6% of the voice market share attributed the network outage to a technical hitch that sent Kenyans into a frenzy over the communication blackout that occurred some minutes to 10 a.m. today.
In a statement to media houses, CEO of Safaricom Bob Collymore said that they were able to identify the problem with their technicians jumping in to solve the problem immediately it occurred and had been working with engineers to restore services since they went down. He also apologised to the Safaricom customers.
.@bobcollymore We have identified the root cause of the outage and are working to resolve this in the shortest time possible. pic.twitter.com/1ItendcDup
— Safaricom Limited (@SafaricomLtd) April 24, 2017
Some of the problems that millions of Kenyans faced with the outage included:
- The inability to call or receive voice calls for hours
- Text messages not being sent or delivered. Some customers complained of receiving text messages more than twice or thrice from the same person.
- M-Pesa services also saw a hit with customers unable to use the money transfer service
- The inability to get hold of Safaricom’s Contact Centre for assistance on the outage
Bob Collymore then added and assured Kenyans that they were able to restore the Voice, Data, SMS, M-PESA and Enterprise services that are available after the root cause of the technical hitch was resolved.
The outage this morning put thousands of services that run the country’s economy on hold, not to mention the millions of shillings lost by the company, however, Bob Collymore guarantees their customers that the company is putting the necessary measures in place to ensure that such a case would not happen again.
