Safaricom issued an apology and offered customers free m-Pesa transactions for 24 hours after an outage disrupted its telecoms and money services.

Following the outage on 24 April, the Communication Authority of Kenya’s Director General Francis Wangusi told Kenyan daily The Star he had demanded an explanation, and would take action if the problem was a result of Safaricom’s own technical failure.

Some customers were unable to use any Safaricom services, including calls, texts and m-Pesa on Monday morning. The company said most customers were back online by midday, and normal service had resumed.

In a statement, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore (pictured) apologised to customers and offered them free person-to-person transactions through m-Pesa for 24 hours as a gesture.

Explaining the issue, Collymore said: “We had two traffic outlets which failed rapidly one after the other. In response, as a priority, the team very quickly started operating the affected functions from our redundant equipment in order to restore services.”

Split calls
In the aftermath of the issue, Wangusi told The Standard the scale of the outage was part of: “the risks of too much dominance by one player.”

Earlier this year, Safaricom’s influence across the country’s mobile money and communications sectors came under scrutiny when Kenyan national assembly member Jakoyo Midiwo proposed changes to the law which would have forced Safaricom to separate its business units.

The bill failed to get the support of Kenya’s information minister.

Speculaton was then intensified when reports emerged the Communications Authority commissioned UK analyst firm Analysys Mason to conduct a review of the country’s telecoms sector. A leaked version of the draft document advised Safaricom should be split.

The Communications Authority since said it does not plan to force the business to separate.