EDITORIAL: Punishing success is wrong

Kenya’s biggest telecoms operator and most profitable company Safaricom is once again in the crosshairs of the regulators because of runaway success that has left it as a dominant player in the marketplace.

Analysys Mason, the foreign company that the Communications Authority of Kenya hired to study Kenya’s telecoms market structure with a view to finding non-competitive behaviour and remedies to it, has produced a report with far reaching recommendations that, if implemented, would grossly affect some of the players.  

But contrary to public expectation, the consultants appear to have spent very little time on what was generally thought to have been their mandate – to find out not only the existence of a dominant player but most importantly tell the country whether there is abuse of that dominance.

For instance, while the report is very specific on what should be done to Safaricom to deal with its dominance in the market, there is very little effort spent in defining, mapping and coming to a clear conclusion as to whether the telecoms firm is abusing its dominance.

One is left feeling that the Analysys Mason report is mainly targeting Safaricom for its success in the telecoms market. Yet global best practice demands that regulators should pay attention to abuse of dominance.

The public expectation is that fairness is exercised in dealing with Safaricom’s market power so that it all comes out with recommendations that are applicable across all sectors of the economy where dominant players exist.

That will only happen if the regulators restrict themselves to addressing abuse of dominance and not dominance per se.