East and Central Africa’s biggest telco Safaricom serving over 26.6 million subscribers and providing over 200,000 touch points for its customers and offering over 100 different products under its portfolio suffered a major blow Monday morning causing panic among its dedicated users due to 100 percent call drops, zero data, zero M-Pesa transactions and service denials.
Though Safaricom is yet to give any official communication apart from a tweet saying it has suffered an outage on voice, data and M-PESA services and the issue is under resolution, conspiracy theorists can’t keep quiet with several Twitter users claiming the move could be political. Some sources tell TechMoran problems began Saturday evening with failing M-Pesa notifications and delayed texts suspecting the firm might have suffered a major hack. However, this is just a wake up call to Safaricom’s loyal customers to get backup plans for Internet, voice and mobile financial services as such outages might frequently occur.
On this exact date and month two years ago, Safaricom @SafaricomLtd experienced the same technical hitch! Is it preplanned! @Safaricom_Care pic.twitter.com/ip4DqkYAeh
— Eric Manyikah (@EManyikah) April 24, 2017
@Safaricom_Care is there a problem with mpesa? I cant send money.
— Naiye (@NaiyeLoretta) April 24, 2017
@Safaricom_Care Network failure hear in muranga county , maragwa constituency , Nginda ward. please help
— Charles Bk (@Charles255_BK) April 24, 2017
Somehow I see this happening during the elections period, Safaricom and @kenyapower will be offline. @IEBCKenya
— Jeff Sauke (@JeffSauke) April 24, 2017
@safaricomltd @Safaricom_Care
OMG do you think people are this stupid??? pic.twitter.com/HGOEHge6ku— Kinuthia Simon (@skamau91) April 24, 2017
Jubilee has decided to switch off Safaricom call and sms on the wake of SonkoVsKenneth
— JULIUS (@_Kanjamas) April 24, 2017
@Safaricom_Care @kiogy Ths shud b a wakin call that u need a bak-up networkin system.So that incase of such a mess u swtch to the bak-up as u sort out main system.
— Special Breed. (@DoctorKanina) April 24, 2017
Safaricom just shutdown their network because of Jubilee primaries now what will happen in August general elections
— ItsMatere (@MatereDenis) April 24, 2017
Oya @Safaricom_Care have you tried turning it off and on again?
— Cash Money Baite (@UnderscoreBrian) April 24, 2017
Safaricom fibre has gone down & so too has the 3G service, I am in the CBD is anyone else experiencing the same?
— Paul Ochwago (@MtarimboAsili) April 24, 2017
@Safaricom_Care @bobcollymore your services a so poor ..hv just bought a new line .leave the markt if possible ..kwani mmekua KPLC ama??
— muchui kaburu (@muchuikaburuKE) April 24, 2017
Safaricom provides voice, data, financial services and enterprise solutions for a range of subscribers, SMEs and government, using a variety of platforms. With annual revenues in excess of Kshs 150 Billion, Safaricom said it invested Kshs 32.13 billion in infrastructure a few months ago. The firm also provides over 80% of Kenya’s population with 2G and 3G coverage to 95% of Kenyans, there is a reason for everyone to be worried. Even SMEs using its fibre infrastructure could not get online or access their files.
Safricom’s M-PESA, which serves over 24 million customers and over 114,000 M-PESA agent outlets countrywide has not been spared either. TechMoran contacted Safaricom’s internal communications team which sent us a tweet link with no additional communication so guys sorry, deal with it!
Update at 12:05PM
POSITION STATEMENT
24th APRIL 2017
NETWORK OUTAGE- PROGRESS UPDATE
We wish to notify the public that starting from 9:30 am today, we experienced a system outage affecting a number of core services in our network. This outage affected Voice, Data, SMS, M-PESA and Enterprise services.
We have identified the root cause of the outage and are working to resolve this in the shortest time possible. In the meantime, Voice, Data, SMS, M-PESA and Enterprise services will be available intermittently until the issue is fully resolved.
We will continue to update customers on the progress to restore services. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Bob Collymore
Chief Executive Officer
