Safaricom And Telkom Kenya Ltd To Form Tower Share Firm

New system brings both Pre and PostPay services together and is expected to improve speed and underpin better client experience End Quote

(1888PressRelease) October 18, 2011 - Converged communications company, Safaricom, has today announced plans to cut over to a new, advanced billing system to better serve its customers.

The converged billing system, which will cater for both Safaricom PrePay and PostPay customers, has advanced features that will translate into faster service and in overall terms, better customer experience for the firm's over 17 million subscribers.

For instance, PostPay customers will now be able to get their bills in real time and do not have to wait till the end of the month. This will enable them monitor their usage more efficiently and plan accordingly. They can also pay much faster using the M-PESA service.

Announcing the migration, which is planned to take place between 6 pm today evening to noon tomorrow, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore apologized to customers, noting that a number of services would be affected by the cutover. He however asked for patience, stressing that the move was necessary in order to offer Safaricom customers a superior billing and overall customer experience.

"This migration into a converged billing ecosystem is a key plank of our continued efforts aimed at improving our overall proposition and delighting our customers, both PrePay and PostPay, more. We appeal to our customers to bear with us the temporary disruption and assure them that it will be worth the sacrifice," said Mr Collymore.

While voice and SMS services will proceed as normal within Safaricom and with other networks, the migration will affect the following services: bill payment by M-PESA, PostPay customer enquiry service through *200#, balance query, data bundle query, SMS bundle purchase and new line activation through 212. Other services to be affected include purchase and renewal of Skiza tunes, DSTV Mobile, iDJ and purchase of data bundle via short-code and online Blackberry services.

About Safaricom…Safaricom offers total communications solutions to a growing clientele in Kenya. With a subscriber base of over 17 million, Safaricom provides a comprehensive range of services under one roof: mobile and fixed voice and data services on a variety of platforms: Kenya's widest and only 3G network; a growing fibre optic cable footprint and its most expansive WiMAX presence. Safaricom also pioneered commercial mobile money transfer globally through M-PESA, the most successful such service anywhere in the world. Safaricom is listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) and trades on the Telecommunication and Technology segment.

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