Ban piles cost pressure on telcos over dormant lines

Safaricom House along Waiyaki Way in Nairobi on March 4, 2025.

Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group

Telecommunications firms in Kenya face fresh operational pressure after a High Court ruling barred automatic recycling of inactive mobile numbers, forcing operators to rethink how they manage dormant SIM cards in an increasingly privacy-conscious digital economy.

The judgment effectively disrupts a long-standing industry practice where operators deactivate and reassign unused numbers after a defined inactivity period, typically 90 days, to optimise limited numbering resources and reduce network inefficiencies.

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