Kenya: Airtel accuses competition regulator of favoring Safaricom to the detriment of competitors
November 4th 2021
In the second quarter of 2021, Safaricom already held 64.2% of the Kenyan telecoms market. Airtel, which sees a difficult future for its activities if such a situation persists, has brought to light the dominant character of its main competitor.
The mobile operator Airtel Kenya filed a petition last week with the parliamentary committee in charge of information and communication technologies, denouncing what it considers to be the favoritism of the competition regulator towards Safaricom . The Kenyan branch of the Indian telecoms group Bharti Airtel complains about the passivity of the Kenya Competition Authority (CAK) in the face of the overwhelming power of Safaricom which inexorably harms competition.
Airtel Kenya indicates “ that there has been no dispute as to the status of Safaricom with regard to its dominant position and its power in the market. However, there has been reluctance to declare Safaricom dominant in the retail mobile phone market and the retail mobile money market ”. For the second operator in the Kenyan telecoms market, ” declaring Safaricom dominant is the first step in ensuring the competitiveness of the market “. But he regrets that ” the idea has been perpetuated that declaring Safaricom a dominant player amounts to punishing success “.
It has been several years since competing telecom operators have called for control of the hegemonic power of Safaricom on the Kenyan telecoms market. Parliament has been called upon several times for this purpose and although there is a competition law – Competition Act 2010 – which makes it possible to identify a dominant company, it does not provide for clear restrictions to contain it as is the cases in several countries such as Ghana. According to the latest statistics published by the Communications Authority, Safaricom held a 64.2% market share in the second quarter of 2021 against 26.9% for Airtel and 6.2% for Telkom.
In its petition, Airtel Africa also denounced the allocation to Safaricom of more spectral resources – 50 MHz of spectrum for Airtel against 82.5 MHz for Safaricom and 37.5 MHz for Telkom Kenya – which allow it to provide better quality and attract more subscribers. According to Airtel, even mobile termination rates (interconnection fees) are in favor of Safaricom which has been charging 0.99 shilling (0.0089 USD) per minute since 2015.
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