What is Safaricom Wholesale Business?

• Wholesale is the business of selling and buying products and services from other telecom providers, carriers, aggregators, ISPs and large scale operators of telecommunication services
• Safaricom Wholesale provides telecommunication services to other telecom carriers and service providers for own use or reselling to end users

What are the platforms for Safaricom Wholesale & Roaming Solutions?
2G, 3G, 4G, WiMAX, IP, Fibre & Satellite

What are the solutions offered by wholesale and Roaming?

• Capacity & IP (Leased capacities, White labelled cloud, IP transit, International MPLS).
• Infrastructure access on Safaricom Tower, Fibre & Data Centre .
• Roaming, International voice & SMS

What are the key benefits of Safaricom Wholesale and Roaming solutions?

• Speed to market: Saves customers initial project time for setting up.
• Greatly reduces your initial set up cost.
• Allow customer to leverage on Safaricom expertise and extended experience in building the best network.

How do I get access to information about Safaricom Wholesale and Roaming?
Information is available on our website using the link below:
http://www.safaricom.co.ke/business/wholesale-roaming

What is the difference between Wholesale and Enterprise?

• Safaricom Wholesale provide services on commercial terms to other telecom carriers and high-volume users of telecommunications services.
• Safaricom Enterprise sells products and services directly to enterprise/corporate customers.

PoP– point of presence is an artificial demarcation point OR interface point between communicating entities. It may include a meet-me-room.
An Internet point of presence is an access point to the Internet. It is a physical location that houses servers, routers, switches and digital/analog call aggregators. ISPs typically have multiple PoPs, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. PoPs are also located at Internet exchange points and colocation centres.

Last mile– refers to that portion of the telecommunications network chain that physically reaches the end-user’s/customer’s premises,e.g. copper wire subscriber lines connecting telephones to the local telephone exchange; coaxial cable service drops carrying cable television signals from utility poles to subscribers’ homes, and cell towers linking local cell phones to the cellular network.

Towers-are, typically, tall structures designed to support antennas (also known as aerials) for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television.

Colocation– or colo refers to the provision of space for a customer’s telecommunications equipment on the service provider’s premises. Also a data centre facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing hardware.
Typically, a colo provides the building/tower space, cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security while the customer provides servers and storage. Space in the facility is often leased by the rack, cabinet, cage or room.

Optical fibre– is a flexible, transparent fibre made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Used most often as a means to transmit light between the two ends of the fibre and find wide usage in fibre-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than wire/copper cables. Uses technologies such as DWDM.

Data Centre-is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and various security devices.

Interconnect– connects you to highly resilient and flexible network, giving coverage and connectivity to other public switched voice networks.

How do I make a call outside the country?
Always make sure you use the country code of the country the number you are calling plus a leading “+” before the country code. E.g when calling Uganda use +256xxxxxxx

What is international SMS?
SMS sent to another country other than your home country

How do I send SMS outside the country?
Always make sure your service centre is configured as +254722500029

What is Roaming?
Roaming is the ability for a customer of mobile communications to automatically make and receive telephone calls, send and receive data, or access other services while travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a network of another operator.e.g. a Safaricom subscriber who travels to London and selects Vodafone UK to roam.
Safaricom currently offers only International roaming to subscribers.

What are the requirements for roaming provisioning?
Individual prepaid customers have roaming service provisioned by default, postpaid individual customers however need to pay a roaming deposit for service provisioning. For corporate customers roaming service is provisioned through the request of the account managers.

When I travel how do I attach on the foreign network?
When you switch on your handset in a foreign country the phone searches for available network and sends a request to attach on the network with the strongest signal. As a user you also have the freedom to select manually the network you would prefer to roam with especially if you have purchased bundles available in a specific network or the cheapest network.

Which networks can I roam with when I travel abroad?
For roaming information on available networks and rates per destination please dial *170*12#.

Can I check my balance while roaming?
Yes you can check your balance while roaming by dialing *144# for prepaid and *200# for postpaid.

How do I manage my Roaming cost?
You can manage your roaming cost by setting a limit of how much you want to use while roaming by either login in Safaricom web self-care:

https://selfcare.safaricom.co.ke/FrontEnd/productsAndServices or dial *100*3*3# and *200*3*3#.

How do I top up my Safaricom prepaid line while roaming out of the country?
You can top up using Safaricom voucher through USSD *141*Voucher number# or use Mpesa top up.

How to manually select a network.
Android: Settings>Tethering and Networks>Mobile Networks>Network Operators>Select Automatically (Recommended) or Search networks manually
Apple: Settings>Carrier> Turn Automatic selection Off > Select Network

How to disable smart phone updates.
Android: Settings>About phone>Update centre>Settings>auto update apps>off/via Wi-Fi only
Apple: Settings>iTunes & App store >Automatic downloads >Updates >off

How to contact customer care while roaming.
Call +254722002100 Prepaid and +254722002200 Postpaid

What to do if phone gets lost or stolen while roaming.
Call +254722002100 Prepaid and +254722002200 Postpaid to have the line blocked then replace on return.

What is LTE?
An abbreviation for Long-Term Evolution, commonly marketed as 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

What speeds can I achieve using LTE?
Theoretical download rates up to 299.6 Mbit/s and upload rates up to 75.4 Mbit/s depending on the user equipment category.

What model of LTE is offered within Wholesale?
Safaricom currently offers a DATA ONLY proposition to NFP Tier 2 players and application service provider licenses.

What are the Commercial terms for accessing LTE by third parties?
This will be on an agreed retail minus percentage with or without IP breakout.

Can my customers use the service while roaming?
No. At the moment the service will only be offered within the country.

How many Data Centres does Safaricom have and where they located?
3 Data Centres located at : Thika, Nairobi and Kisumu

Who are Safaricom submarine cable providers?

• SEACOM & TEAMS
• Access to Vodafone submarine global footprint (infrastructure formerly owned by Cable and Wireless)

How do I know the prices for capacity?

Capacity prices are negotiated depending on the routes/distances and service to be carried. Pricing can be done for 10Mbps in increments up to STM-64.

Do I get redundancy on all routes I want?
Redundancy can be provided at a negotiated rate.

Where are the key Safaricom PoPs?
Nairobi, Kampala, Mombasa, Fujairah, London

Can I get connectivity to any area in the world?
Yes.

What is IP transit?
Is the service of allowing data network traffic to connect an Internet service provider (ISP) to the larger Internet.

What are the IP transit charges?
This is billed per Mb and dependent on the route.

QoS-Quality of Service
ITR-International Termination Rate
VOIP-Voice over IP
SIP-Session Initiation Protocol
MSA-Master Service Agreement
IOT-Inter-Operator Tariffs
CLI-Caller Line Identification
IXP-Internet exchange point