Be very afraid of the emergent local telecommunication–government Public Private Partnerships-‘PPP’ model if “virtual business lobby” groups are pursuing it. Governments around the world ascend to power essentially on political promises that they have to fulfil. Taxes enable them to achieve those promises. Companies, on the other hand are driven solely by the profit motive; “if there is not business case it is not worth investing in.”
Both of these eye consumers and "profitable market" and "tax base" and in many countries they jointly perceive consumer protection as a threat to the status-quo and thus impoverished consumer protection environments are very good for them.
What happens when government and business collude to achieve their respective expectations? Perhaps local Enrons
Happy mobile companies reduced their tariffs for Christmas and New Year?
Cutting through the celcos advertising hype gets to the real telecommunication prices the consumer may find enlightening.
Take Safaricom advertisement, for example, “From midnight 21 December 2006 up to midnight 1 st January 2007 call at only 10/= per minute”
Truth be told: Because 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, and 1 January are either holidays or Week-ends where off-peak tariffs apply when and that most of their subscribers are on the *default* pre-paid tariff of 32.50 (peak), 11/= (off-peak), essentially their “Merry Christmas” was largely for four days 22, 27, 28, and 29 December.
It is incomprehensible why it costs the consumer shilling 10/= to find out their phone airtime balance via IVR(Interactive Voive Response) but cost nothing when they send an sms to find out the balance.
Turning to Celtel advertised “Uhuru kwa Jamii” 12/= per minute tariff, they never bother to explain in the advertisements what call set-up fee of 2.5Ksh per answered call is, thus the least call cost is shillings 14.50, truth be told. The same for “Uhuru kwa Umoja” tariff of shilling 16/= per minute (+add 2.5Ksh per answered call).
Under the current laws mobile companies can change their tariffs any way they like and they “only need inform” CCK of their new tariffs. Today, CCK has old rates and this could mean either they have not informed CCK or the regulator has not bothered to update their site. On their website, the CCK advices visitors to go to respective companies for the most current tariffs.
This means that the companies can charge *whatever they like* and the consumer has no recourse. I wonder how many have ever tried to lodge a complaint with the CCK as prescribed by the law and saw any action taken?
Is the CCK still in control or are they all too eager to look the other way while consumers lounge in disenfranchisement? Welcome to Kenya, long policy processes, wonderful policies, beautiful laws – but terrible implementation.
Consider http://www.cck.go.ke/tariff_regulation/, which says: -
“Tariff Regulation forms part of the core mandate of the Commission. Tariff [price] regulation entails the prescription of guidelines on how to determine fees to ensure competitive and affordable pricing structures for postal and telecommunications operations…. The element of prices has significant bearing on the development of Universal Services and general economic development hence CCK's regulatory intervention is critical.”
I wonder if some of these constitute “misleading advertising” criminal under provisions contained in the Kenya Information and Communications Bill-2006?
Information and communication consumer protection in Kenya suffers several from lacklustre official support and no official funding. As a result, come 2007 I have decided to blogg these consumer issues and I shall take each one of them in turns Telkom being next. CCK is likely to receive the worst thrashing because it is the Regulator’s failure to protect any nor fund consumer protection initiatives that perpetuates the apathetic state.
The Ministry of Information and Communications should explain where they have taken vital documents (National ICT Policy, Information and Communications Bill, Media Bill, Freedom of Information Bill, etc) from the ministry website now replaced by a colourful website full broken links some replaced by several dot com websites diversions. Or could these dot coms be new *government* departments? I have no idea.
This is especially important when the information bill is at an advanced stage and we would no want some changes favouring telecommunication companies - their newfound partners sneaked through the back door to further detriment of ICT consumers.
If only the documents were available online, I would have refered to the specific ICT policy clause urging consumers to take responsibility and highlight issues affecting them. But now I cannot because an otherwise fully functional ministry website with all the documents has been put down - and replaced with a colourful but nearly empty template.
Strangely, lately it has become impossible to get any responses from the Ministry as the Accounting Officer is said to be in meetings and calls and emails are not returned.
The joy about blogging is that CCK is legally denied the power to control content over the Internet so they cannot legally shut down any blog.
I shall blogg in 2007 that is my New Year resolution full stop.
