The liberalisation of Kenya's telecommunications sector began in October 1998 with the passing of the Kenya Communications Act. The main result of the act was the dissolution of the Kenya Postal and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC), which had until then taken responsibility for the nation's telecommunications, radio communications and postal service. The KPTC was split into three entities: the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK), Telkom, the national fixed-line operator, and the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the sector's first independent regulator.
The CCK's regulatory remit extends to telecommunications, radio communications and postal services within Kenya. Its main responsibilities are:
Licensing (telecoms and postal/courier) operators
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Regulating tariffs
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Establishing interconnection principles
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Type-approving communications equipment
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Managing radio spectrum resources
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Formulating telecommunications numbering schemes and assigning numbers to network operators
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Implementing Universal Service Obligation for both postal and telecommunication services.
The CCK has no dedicated telecommunications department and is divided by function (ie spectrum management, legal affairs, licensing, competition and markets analysis and central services) rather than by area. Divisions for telecommunications, broadcast and postal services exist at the sub-level.
The CCK's first major act was the licensing of two GSM operators in 2000. The first of these licences was awarded by auction to KenCell in January 2000 for USD 55 million. Among the other pre-qualified bidders were France Telecom, MIC, Telia Overseas and Orascom. Meanwhile the CCK officially granted a GSM licence in May 2000 to state-owned Safaricom, which had launched its GSM network in March 1997, for the same amount of money.
The CCK issued a tender for a third mobile licence in January 2003, arguing that an additional player was necessary to fulfil its telecommunications policy objectives and to respond to the huge demand for mobile telephony in the country, estimated at the time to be between 4.7 and 9.4 million lines. This time using a beauty contest, the third licence was awarded to Econet Wireless International in September 2003 for USD 27 million, the highest bid tabled. The licence award was temporarily put on hold when Kenya Telecommunications Investment Group, one of the unsuccessful bidders backed by Detecon, took the CCK to court over its decision. The court case lasted until March 2004, when the final judgement went in favour of the CCK.
The CCK opened a tender for the country's second national fixed-line operator in early 2003, with seven consortia pre-qualifying in December 2003 (whittled down to five in January 2004). The final licence award is expected by the end of 2004.
In addition to the aforementioned national licensing processes for national fixed and mobile operators, the CCK's main responsibilities have been twofold: the settling of disputes between the two mobile operators, notably a dispute over payphone interconnection, and the issuing of licences to regional fixed-line operators in 2000. Its main challenge now is to expand its current role, largely as an arbiter of disputes and granter of licences, to provide greater scrutiny and monitoring of the existing operators. While the regulator has so far been able to enforce interconnection agreements and settle the provision of accounts by the operators, it is now looking to enforce mobile number portability and greater standards of QoS in the sector.
The CCK is regarded as more transparent than regulators in most other African markets, although not to the extent of the regulators in South Africa and Botswana. The CCK's website gives a clear general overview of Kenya's telecoms structure, the country's mobile and fixed operators and the regulator's role in the sector. However, the monitoring aspect of the CCK is not reflected and there is no statistical data readily available either regarding the telecoms market as a whole, or the performance of the country's operators. Such data is often available in an annual report, depending on the operators' collaboration which, at time of writing, appears to be minimal.
