Telkom Kenya cites corporate sabotage in cable vandalism

Telkom Kenya has blamed corporate sabotage for the persistent cases of fiber optic cable vandalism that has led to lost clients and replacement costs.

Telkom Kenya, which provides integrated solutions via copper and fiber, wonders why the thieves are targeting its cables and excluding the competition. The cable providers are usually provided with locations to lay cable by the local government.

"How do you explain that a thief comes to a duct holding cables from four different providers and decides to steal the one from Telkom Kenya; if its a case of normal theft, then they would all have been stolen," said Mickael Ghossein, Telkom Kenya CEO.

Ghossein was specifically baffled by the Telkom cable theft at the Lake Nakuru National Park, where the presence of lions, cheetahs among other wildlife did not deter the thieves.

Telkom Kenya points to corporate sabotage because of cases in which Telkom had been chosen as the only provider, but vandalism caused outages. In some cases another provider was asked to provide back-up and the vandalism incidences ceased.

"In one of the cases, Telkom was providing one of the largest institutions with STM-1 155Mbps and we were the only providers; the cable was vandalized almost on a daily basis causing outages until the client opted for redundancy from our competitor and the theft stopped," said Angela Mumo, corporate communications manager at Telkom Kenya.

Telkom has also complained at laxity in law enforcement, where suspects are set free with small fines while losses to Telkom are big and affect eventual profits.

"We are registering close to 50 vandalism incidences a month with more than 50 percent of these directly affecting major fiber optic lines thus affecting both voice and data service delivery to several customers; it's disheartening to see suspected vandals released on bond so soon after arrest yet their criminal actions continue to wreck havoc on the general economy besides the obvious loss on Telkom Kenya," added Ghossein.

Telkom Kenya is losing 200 million Kenya shillings (US$2.5 million) annually to copper and fiber optic cable vandalism and 42 million shillings accruing from maintenance and security costs of its infrastructure.

In South Africa, Telkom SA has suffered losses of 3 billion rand ($388 million) in the past three years because of copper and fiber optic cable thefts. The losses include the value of the material stolen, the cost of security to guard against theft, and lost revenue.

"The cost of security has risen sharply during the past three years from 127-million rand in 2006/07 to 231-million rand last year; but as a result, the cost of replacing or repairing the copper stolen has dropped from 179-million rand to 141-million rand; the loss of revenue has, however, shot up from 368-million rand to 907-million rand," said Siphiwe Nyanda, South Africa's communications minister.

South Africa has been on the front line of fighting telecom cables theft because of its advanced infrastructure, with laws generally considered to be appropriate. In Kenya, the law is yet to recognize cable theft's impact on the economy and company profits. Currently, thieves are charged under the criminal procedure act, just as in normal theft of property.