NAIROBI: Safaricom has moved to court demanding a repay of an estimated half a billion shillings from Airtel Kenya and an estimate of Ksh150M from Essar (Yu Mobile) fees related to terminal charges (the amount of money an operator pays rivals if its subscribers call another network) since October. The operators are also to pay the accumulated sum together with interests and collection fees for delayed payment. Bharti Airtel and Essar are still pushing for lower termination rates claiming that they are paying Safaricom a large sum of cash since they handle most of the cross network calls. Shivan Bhargava, Managing Director at Bharti Airtel Kenya previously explained that they fully support CCK on that move to slash terminal rates but they were not in the position to further reduce their tariffs, adding that, the current interconnection charges would setback its return to profitability. “The current market shareholding means that large share of calls made by our subscribers go to the leading mobile operator, while very few calls originate from the network to ours.” Wrangles still exist as per the idea of slashing terminal rates and it is still undecided on which move to take. Francis Wangusi, the acting director at CCK still maintains that the termination rate would drop from the current Sh2.21 to Sh1.44 per minute in July. Bitange Ndemo, Information and Communication PS commented that there was a need to conduct fresh study that would look into the current rates and see whether the move is justified or not.
