The Communications Authority has intervened in the row between Telkom Kenya and Eaton which operates the telco towers in a bid to restore services. The row arose when Eaton switched off the telco’s towers thus leading to a disruption of services.
Eaton had switched off the telco’s 49 towers on 7th December which according to reports was due to a KSh255.6 million debt in applicable fees for services rendered between September-November 2019. The outage affected data and voice services as well as text and mobile money. It was at this point that the CA in a bid to ensure that subscribers did not bear the brunt of the shutdown, ordered Eaton to restore services by midnight on December 13th to which they complied.
According to CA, the shutdown did not follow established dispute resolution mechanisms provided before engaging in interruption of services. At the same time, the authority urged Telkom Kenya to make an effort towards settling their liabilities.
The CA is expected to have a sit down with Telkom and Eaton on 20th December 2019 to review progress on the matter.