WHY TELKOM KENYA MUST DO MORE THAN JUST RE-BRAND

Telkom Kenya (formerly Orange Telkom) has gripped our business headlines in the past couple of weeks, and all for the right reasons. This would come as a reprieve especially to those of us in the Telkom industry. We have watched this sleeping giant change ownership, first when French Orange bought a 51% stake in 2007, to 18 months ago when Private equity firm Helios took over from Orange and the government increased its stake to 40%. All the while, the Telkom giant has nothing to show for it in terms of product offering and subscriber number. This is despite its huge asset base in real Estate, frequency spectrum, stake in major undersea cables, fiber optic network etc and the goodwill from Kenyans, I mean isn’t Telkom the ‘KQ’ of Telecoms in Kenya. 

What really went wrong at Telkom is a story for another day. It would however make for a great case study considering that they gave birth to Safaricom. 

It’s great to however to see how much work has gone into it the past few months with an objective of turning it around. The restructuring could not have come at a better time and with better people. Take for example Kris Senanu. The man behind the great success at AccessKenya, a fully owned Kenyan brand which went on to achieve 40% market share within 10 years of launch, with pioneer products like VOIP and home internet. With Kris heading the enterprise business, we hope to see great improvement in product offering.

Besides the restructure and the re-brand, there are pertinent issues that need to be looked at if the sleeping giant has to make a turn for the better. The biggest of them being culture; we all have heard the popular saying that Culture eats strategy for breakfast (my strategy lecturer used to say Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and supper). My experience as an enterprise client of Orange has been pathetic. With a customer service centre that doesn’t seem to understand how important their contribution to a company is. I have had lots of former colleagues who moved to Telkom and they would often comment that one suffers a big culture shock when they get there. You could have the best strategy and products but if the culture is wrong then nothing will be achieved. We hope that with Helios holding a majority stake, this would be prioritised. A change in culture will go a long way in supporting the strategy to turn Telkom around.

The other big issue is products. You would wonder why we are celebrating Telkom’s launch of 4G. When did Safaricom and Airtel launch 4G? It’s even more disappointing that this is when they are thinking of Mobile money, like seriously MPESA has been with us for 10years. Telkom’s fixed phone is an ancient solution that is overpriced at Ksh 12 per minute, their pricing for fixed connectivity equipment is nothing you want to talk about. It would be great if they were not playing catch-up. It would be interesting to see what other innovative products they have under their sleeves. I expected the re-brand to come with fancier offerings and not 4G and free WhatsApp. I would be disappointed if in the next few months we don’t see new launches in the space of Cloud and Internet of Things (IoT). What strategy does Telkom have around regional connectivity? Enterprises in Kenya are waiting to see your strategy around your connectivity equipment cost? 

Your rebrand campaign was powerful; it stole some of our hearts. But if we have to keep moving with you, you need to give us a reason to and stop playing catch up. Work hard on your culture and innovate; and we shall keep moving.