As Africell sets to exit the telecom sector stage, it is expected that subscribers will have to find other alternatives among the big players. The Uganda Communication Commission recently came out to clarify that it had no objection to Africell’s proposed date of 8th October 2021 as the date for cessation of operations following the one-month notification of customers and staff effective 8th September 2021.
However, Africell was advised to strictly adhere to the commitments it made to the Commission with respect to ensuring that all customers’ claims and complaints are concluded before the actual date of cessation.
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The telecom regulator said pre-exit conditions are intended to ensure that the interests and rights of Africell’s customers, agents, employees, trade creditors, and the Government of Uganda are safeguarded before the exit. Now, Africell subscribers have no option apart from either going to Airtel, MTN or Lycamobile each having its flaws and strengths. We recently wrote expressing our surprise that existing telecoms were not coming up with promos to lure these subscribers to their network. Africell customers may get to any of the networks as their phones support its frequency bands.
Well, the battle for Africell’s 9% subscriber base has begun as Airtel is offering a 50% Bonus on all Data Bundles for everyone switching from Africell to Airtel. The switching offer will only last till the 15th of November which is about a month if subscribers switch today. Users were concerned wondering how Airtel would know that one has switched since everyone anyone can buy any SIM card yet they weren’t an Africell subscriber. To alleviate these fears, the company has assured the potential “switchers” that this can be well known at the service center where the SIM card registration is done since National IDs are required to register to a new network.
A good case for Number Portability as Africell exists
The exit of Africell is a perfect justification for number portability. Most Africell subscribers we have spoken to would just like to retain their existing numbers and just be switched to a new network. In fact, some don’t mind compromising and remain with the last six digits codes evening the network code changes. The challenge with both of these is that;
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- UCC has failed to implement mobile number portability
- For the latter case, most telecom companies no longer support the service that allows new subsribers to choose their desired numbers.
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is a way in which subscribers can change networks without changing their mobile phone numbers or SIM cards and still remain with the same digits. What this means is that if you like the tariffs or the network quality that mobile network X provides and you are on mobile network Y, you can seamlessly shift from Y to X without changing your number. This is not an option for Africell subscribers. So if your well-known number is +256-7xx-xxxxxx it will always remain that if even if you switch, this shown in the concern from an Africell subscriber in the tweet above to Airtel.
In 1996, Congress in the US passed the 1996 Act 3 that sought to remove barriers that handicapped a healthy competition among players in the telecommunications sector. And since then, this has spread worldwide as regulators implement Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in their respective countries, but 25 years down the road UCC has failed to catch up. In Africa countries like Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, and Ghana have implemented MNP, and Nigeria among others have implemented MNP.
When MNP is introduced the biggest carriers thought and still think that this would be a massive threat to their businesses especially for the country’s leading carriers. In 2013, I knew that this would be a challenge to implement, and the resistance was not on the side of UCC but rather on the side of the leaders of the dynamic telecom duo.
I still argue that SIM registration significantly raised the difficulty of switching networks to a level that entrenched the incumbents. I think this should be considered when investigating why Africell failed. The harder it is to switch networks, the less likely people are to do it. Number portability and registration requirements are both parts of this.
If Africell could still hand out SIM cards on the street, they might have been able to grow their customer base to a more sustainable level. If people didn’t have to re-align every material and service that had their phone number attached to it, they would also be more likely to switch. There is no doubt that Uganda has gone from one of the most competitive markets to one of the least. We are now a duopoly.
