From: Stephen Mutoro
[mailto:stephen@cofek.co.ke]
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 9:13 AM
To: 'kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke'
Subject: Introducong Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) on Kictanet:
Importance: High
Sensitivity: Confidential
Dear
Alice & Others:
Greetings
from Cofek and I. We are very grateful to have been invited on this forum.
Clearly, we have a lot to learn from you as we offer our counter views and lessons.
Please allow us to make our maiden submission here. Indeed, we must hasten to
mention that at Cofek we are keen to discuss issues and not
personalities. We hope this forum will live to this expectation. As a credible
and umbrella federation of consumer organizations, we are equally realistic –
we are well aware that sustainable consumer benefits are best reaped when the
market is fair, just, competitive and predictably stable. Bottom line, we hope
we can agree to disagree on certain matters without being personal!
From
the foregoing, we are friends of all service providers. This is because without
any of them, the consumer is in serious trouble. On telecommunications sector
for instance, the Cofek Sector Unit responsible is a “friend” of all MSPs (Yu,
Orange, Airtel and Safaricom and any other). We had the first meeting with MSPs
on 25th January and hope to host another one before end of April. We
will, therefore, be disappointed if the arguments posted on this forum appear
to suggest that perhaps one or other MSP is better than the other without
credible supporting evidence. Remember, they are all in business to make money.
They wil apply different formula and strategy to this end. Cofek has no problem
with their reasonable profits. Without regret, however, we are ever ready and
willing to take drastic action, including seeking legal redress, should any of
them go against Article 46 of the Constitution as well as Kenya Information and Communications Act (2009).
It is for this reason that Cofek’s first
point of entry into the sector is with the quality and performance of
regulatory regimes, in this case the CCK. We are interested to be assured that
the CCK board of directors and management does not only comply with the law but
is one that can be relied upon to deliver against world benchmarks. On
occasions, we will be keen to discuss various issues – such as the tariff
structure and promotions, innovations, consumer IEC, possibility of a 5th
operator and why not?, MNP among others. In so doing, we work closely with
media houses for instance Cofek will be on KTN Business Live discussing MNP at
2.00 pm today. In a nutshell, we are pleased to be on this forum and wish each
of you a great week ahead!
Kind regards,
Stephen Mutoro
Secretary General, COFEK
------Original
Message------
From:
alice@apc. org
To:
stephen@cofek.co.ke
ReplyTo:
alice@apc. org
Subject:
Kenya ICT Action Network.
Sent:
2 Apr 2011 1:55 PM
I
read your opinion article featured on standard newspaper April 1st and welcome
your views and analysis.
I
would like to invite you to join a multi-stakeholder forum called KICTANet that
discusses ICT policy and regulatory issues.
Thank
you
Alice