Over the Weekend I decided to take a little vacation and because these days it is very easy to travel across East Africa thanks to the East African Community Integration I decided to visit Nairobi which is one of the beautiful cities in East Africa, I took a bus and one of the things I loved is the ease with which East Africans travel across the region, I didn’t get any trouble crossing from Uganda to Kenya, In fact I noticed most of the people crossing the boarder with me didn’t even have passports.
My Nightmare begins when we cross the boarder to Kenya, My phone is in Roaming and the charges on my phone calls start shooting through the roof, that’s when I realize I just crossed a boarder and before I know It I can’t make any calls, my credit was done and all these telecoms I pay money to, can’t even allow me to use the Mobile Money service.
It’s One Region Now:
Like most Giants stuck in their comfort zone, the Big Telecoms have failed to realize that we are now one region, you can not tell me that countries can sit on a round table and make a few decisions for the good of their citizens but you can’t agree on roaming charges. I don’t care about the previous deals just give me a cheaper deal.
It’s Good Customer Relationship:
While in Nairobi I got a chance to visit the park, and on entering the park East African Citizens pay the same amount as Kenyan Citizens while People from outside East Africa where paying more to access the park. The take away point here is that I was paying no extra charge because I am a citizen in the East African Community, this to me was very good Customer Service and it showed me how the EAC Integration is really affecting the region in a very good way, couldn’t we get the same offer from telecom companies? Can you let me have the same call rates as Kenyans have while am in Kenya?
It’s Not About The Money:
I tried checking my Mobile Money balance and I got the balance but I was charged for this service, which I understand because I was roaming and my network felt it needed to charge me for checking my balance, my problem came in when I tried to now buy airtime from the same Telecom and they couldn’t process this transaction. For some reason they can bill me for checking my mobile money balance but they can’t let me withdraw the money, what is that?
I will stop here for now but you can add your reactions in the comments section.
