Safaricom Apologises for Network Hitches, Says Service Back up

Nairobi, November 3, 2010…Safaricom has apologized to its customers for hitches experienced on its network early today and assured them all services had been restored.

The problem was occasioned by a fibre cable cut at Museum Hill last night, triggered by ongoing road construction activity around the area. This led to an outage of both data and voice services to some subscribers.

As a result of the cut-off, subscribers were unable to originate or even terminate calls on their handsets during early morning hours. Also affected were M-PESA, top-up and other services.

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our esteemed customers. Through close monitoring and prioritization, our engineers were able to resolve the issue by using alternative routes to carry traffic. By 10.00, all network services were back up," said Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.

 "We would also like to assure our esteemed customers that we will do our utmost to ensure our network continues to be reliable. We also continue to engage stakeholders with a view to addressing the problem of cable cuts whenever huge infrastructural projects like the Thika Road one, are being executed," he added. 

Nairobi, November 3, 2010…Safaricom has apologized to its customers for hitches experienced on its network early today and assured them all services had been restored.

The problem was occasioned by a fibre cable cut at Museum Hill last night, triggered by ongoing road construction activity around the area. This led to an outage of both data and voice services to some subscribers.

As a result of the cut-off, subscribers were unable to originate or even terminate calls on their handsets during early morning hours. Also affected were M-PESA, top-up and other services.

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our esteemed customers. Through close monitoring and prioritization, our engineers were able to resolve the issue by using alternative routes to carry traffic. By 10.00, all network services were back up," said Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore.

 "We would also like to assure our esteemed customers that we will do our utmost to ensure our network continues to be reliable. We also continue to engage stakeholders with a view to addressing the problem of cable cuts whenever huge infrastructural projects like the Thika Road one, are being executed," he added.