NAIROBI: The Kenyan government has ordered telecom operators to shut down unregistered mobile phone numbers in the country in what they said was an effort to curtail criminal activity. The move, announced on Wednesday, aims to force all Kenyans to register, but out of some 25 million mobile numbers in the country, only 12.4 million have signed up thus far. The deadline to register all mobile numbers is October 1. With price wars continuing to rage in the country, and which telecom operators have said is adversely affecting their revenue, service providers would be forced to implement the order and could lose a dramatic number of users. Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki said the new laws were now in place “to protect mobile service providers from legal suits for blocking SIM cards” and he has directed the Ministry of Information and Communication to ensure no unregistered numbers were in use. “There is now a legal framework to protect service providers from unnecessary legal suits,” Kibaki said at the launch of Telkom Kenya's 3G mobile network in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. Samuel Poghisio, Minister for Information and Communications, said Kenya was moving towards a shared telecoms infrastructure platform and would repossess idle frequencies. “We have had problems with business people who think that resources like spectrums, like frequencies, are to be hoarded for their own individual benefit. The trend now is to share those resources and for us to use them more effectively,” he said in comments published by the ministry. BM
