Safaricom fiber failure leaves customers stranded for hours

Millions of Safaricom Customers Stayed for Hours Without Internet Services Due to a National Outage

The Provider's Wireless and Mobile Broadband Internet Service was Closed from 9am to early after noon leaving customers without a voice connection.

The company that controls more than 75 percent of the country's mobile network has blamed several fiber link breaks for the power outage. "We wish to apologize to our customers and partners for the fact that we are currently facing voice and data cuts caused by multiple fiber link cuts affecting critical transmission equipment," Safaricom said in a statement.

Those in the coastal region and the lower east could not access voice and SMS services.

Users in other parts of the country, however, were able to send and receive money on the M-pesa platform, and text messaging services worked equally well.

"I needed to send emails but I could not send it in. Initially, I thought the settings on my phone were having problems because access to Internet had come to a sudden stop, "said a marketing official in Nairobi, who accused the provider of poor quality of service.

The official statement was greeted with criticism from users who have claimed a refund of their money and the extension of hours for unused and expired packages.Other users have threatened to migrate to other networks.

Other users have turned to social networks to express their frustration from within the mobile service provider

"No Safaricom network, is my line swapped? Safaricom PLC mko wapi ?, asked a Facebook user @Raphael Mutili.

On Saturday, police arrested a Safaricom employee and a student in agronomy and technology at Jomo Kenyatta University over the card exchange scandal. , five cashier numbers, 44 used SIM cards, an Internet router, three M-pesa notebooks and mobile phones

Safaricom is the leading mobile service provider in Kenya, with at least 26 million of subscribers on his network.

Last year, in April, a similar mishap of two hours resulted in a total blackout of the provider's services throughout the country, which the CEO described as an unusual technical accident that caused a Central network failure and redundancy.