Orange Kenya was today rebranded to Telkom. This change followed the purchase of 60% stake of the company by Helios and the government of Kenya increasing their stake from 30 to 40% one year ago.
The official rebranding today marked the official exit of Orange from the Kenyan market.
Under the Orange management, the company had gone through troubling times, most costumers in Kenya were opting for its rivals mostly due to network coverage and reliability. Telkom has realized this and they today announced that they had invested Kshs. 5 Billion to expand and improve their network infrastructure. They also doubled the number of agents around the country for better customer support. Perhaps the most important upgrade was to the 4G network which will cover 9 major towns in Kenya namely Nairobi, Nyeri, Nakuru, Eldoret, Embu, Meru,Mombasa, Kisumu and Kakamega.To lure customers, the company is giving 4G internet data access for free. This offer will only be available to those in 4G coverage areas.
As part of the rebranding, the company changed its logo to a blue and yellow themed design; it’s slogan also changed to “Moving with you”. In addition, a lot of the management roles have been switched with new people in the days leading to today’s rebranding. Some Safaricom executives joined Telkom as well as Chris Senanu from Access Kenya who will be the Managing Director of the Enterprise Division.
The company is also planning to get an overhauled mobile money platform that will come to fill the void left by the termination of Orange Money. This solution, however, is to be implemented in the coming months.