@ Muganda & VVS ... I have not complained about suffericon acquiring any telecos and it's great Atul is getting his dues from his WISP. All im saying is that suffericon have a propensity to practice unfair market strategies. This is clearly shown by how they handle their voice interconnection charges and Mpesa. In the states AT&T did the same thing and had to be broken down into baby bells, Microsoft did it with the internet explorer (shittiest program ever) and had to be reigned in. Suffericon is going to do what these 2 did in Kenya with the data and internet. They have successfully done it with voice.

YU, Zain and Orange are big companies that can can afford and try to compete with suffericon. But when they give up and decide that our market is not worth the trouble dont you think you will suffer when you have to move back to sufferincon. Thats exactly what the regulatory structures should ensure that the field is level and the market leader is not f***ing up others unfairly ... which they are.

The internet services is not well developed and suffericon can and will easily corner this market. The few Wireless internet service providers (WISPs) will eitherbe swallowed up or close shop when suffericon out prices them out of the market then suffericon will go back to ridiculous charges once they have no competition.
What suffericon is doing with interconnection charges, mpesa and mobile transfer is akin to a group of people telling another group of people not to trade in a particular area. That is unfair competition and as the market leader they can do that and get away with it!
The big picture is we suffer in the long run!
@ VVS ...I also gave up and moved to orange. I still have a suffericon line for Mpesa mainly and Im also a shareholder.

@ VVS: Now what fair market policy is that.
Orange bought a debt riddled company who they now find have missing assets, have ridiculous targets in a difficult market with ridiculous interconnection charges.
Zain is suffering from the same ridiculous interconnection charges.
Yes they dont market as well or as aggressively that their fault and not the regulators fault.

The success of Mpesa is not because it is a great product Zap is a much better product which had bank interconnection from the start while safaricom introduces mkesho yesterday and receives accolades. The reason for success is because they are the market leaders who control 70% and they exploit and abuse their position.

They will do the exact same thing with internet services.

I agree the public is to blame for not voting with their feet but the Government is being complicit of the the market abuse and uneven field!

@Tony; we've been over this debate previously. If Orange bought a debt ridden shell of a company, shauri yao! Nobody put a gun to their head.

If Kenyans want to stick to an expensive SCOM; shauri yao!

I have a Zain line that I have used since the days of Kencell. Now I am slowly moving away to YU. Keeping the Zain because I still have FAF on the 3bob offer. I've SMSed them to to move to YU where FAF is just a bob!

I have a SCOM line for MPESA - Zain's zap is hard to find agents. I tried thei GPRS data a year ago and it was too painful - recall my thread on SK?

I have an Orange CDMA EV-DO data modem. Speeds are decent and the price is affordable. I spend about 2k per month on data bundles.

I have a Telkom wireless line to call and recieve business calls from office landlines. It's a 020- so many people imagine that it is a landline.

I have a SCOM 3G data modem which came with a recent laptop acquisation. I only used the 300MB free data. It's very fast, but expensive too. At my data consumption rate, it will probably cost me 4k pm on SCOM, so I don't use at all - sits in my drawer waiting for the day the reduce the rates.

People must learn to look for the best bargains. As MJ put it during the release of 2009/10 results: "this is a difficult market. We have serious challenges, but we haven't just sat and cried for help from the government. We've gone out there and tried to find out what best suits the customers and we've tried our best to offer it at a price that they can afford. that's how we've managed to grow ahead of the others"

Same applies; if people think SCOM is a con; they can simply move!

@Tony:
Activism in a capitalistic economy has very small share of impact. You better just live with what SC are doing.
Whether orange bought a debt ridden asset or not is not the question, if you watched MJ interview of how they only had 200m as resource to establish themself at the time when Kencell was comfortably asleep.
Live with it or find your way into SCOM board room and tell other directors what they are doing is bad.

Did you know that KQ is 'hated' in some African countries for its network despite KQ being the only option?

Why? JEALOUSY (& poor service).

Under Brian Davies, KQ set its target to be THE airline for Africa. Unfortunately, many African countries refused to open the skies but KQ kept on expanding slowly...

SAA & Ethiopian are subsidized by their governments. KQ is not. They continued their expansion with commercial loans. This means they had to expand where there was a market (& access).

Governments are run by political interests who don't care about the mwananchi but driven by populism...

For those supporting CCK (as a blunt tool of the GoK) wasn't it GoK:
1)Ran down Telkom?
2) Owned 60% of Safaricom?
3) Sold 3g license @ $25mn (upfront) when there were other better options like leasing or profit sharing?