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Regulator gives Safaricom seven days to submit report

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Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) Director General Francis Wangusi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Telecoms operator Safaricom #ticker:SCOM has seven days to submit a report to the regulator on Monday’s network failure which left millions of customers in a communication blackout.

Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) director general Francis Wangusi said on Tuesday an interim report submitted by Safaricom on the outage suggests a technical failure although details are yet to be provided.

“According to our regulations in case there is a contravention, which could have been out of what has been done deliberately or probably negligence we can impose a penalty,” he said.

The value of the fine would have to be decided upon by the CA’s board and could be as low as Sh500,000 or as high as 0.2 per cent of gross annual turnover.

Last year, Safaricom reported total revenues of Sh195.68 billion. If calculated against this number, the upper limit of a fine imposed by the CA could top tens of millions of shillings. The Monday outage left Kenyans unable to send messages, make calls, browse or use the mobile money transfer service M-Pesa.

Safaricom on Tuesday said it had repaired its network although customers continued to report periodic interruptions.

READ: Safaricom customers given free M-Pesa deal

The telco also gave Kenyans 24 hours of free person-to-person money transfers to make up for the inconvenience, an offer that came to a close last night.

M-Pesa has over the last decade become a crucial part of Kenya’s economy. The CA statistics estimate that Sh3.3 trillion moved through the mobile money platform in the year to December 2016.
The mobile money system is linked to numerous banks and is even used to pay for government services.

Mr Wangusi was speaking at the launch of an ICT Survey in both the public and private sectors. The report noted that numerous IT security holes have left government agencies sitting ducks for cyber criminals who are constantly on the hunt for critical data.

The study shows that most State agencies and institutions are relying on little more than antivirus software and password locks to keep their data secure. The survey shows 83.1 per cent of public sector institutions do not even have mechanisms to detect intruders on their networks. This means that hackers could theoretically break in and lie low for months, if not years, siphoning sensitive data.