Sexting is banned in Kenya

It is said that the rich dont just attend parties for the sake of having fun. They attend them if it serves to protect their interests. Its also true that they influence the direction in which legislation takes so as to protect their vast investments. For instance in light of the recent tragedy caused by consumption of illicit brews, a beer manufacturer’s greatest interest would be to ensure that the government does not ban their brand or even more give then an opportunity to negotiate less tax. Quite a paradox right there.

Now the same could be said for companies and especially the big ones. By big I mean real big making profits in terms of billions. Ideally it would be expected that they should be able to influence the decision made by the government. Therefore it came as a surprise when Safaricom and pretty much all the Telcos didn’t even attempt to fight back when the government through the Communications Authority of Kenya banned sexting. more information about that is contained in this link.

Ordinarily I would expect the Telco’s to fight back since according to the article there has been an increase in the levels of the act in the past couple of months. An increase in the number of text messages being send through any network should not just make the companies happy but the government too. More profits means more revenue for the government and everyone goes home happy.

So the question that lingers in my mind is why didn’t the Telco’s make attempts to convince the government otherwise? The it hit me!  They arent making alot of money anyway and what this seems is simply a means to kill the service. First the  whatsapp situation has caused all sorts of problems and the availability of entry level smartphones doesn’t  make the situation any better. This article shows the losses whatsapp is causing phone carriers and from this it makes sense why the Kenyan Telco’s wont be fighting back for they know a decline in the number of messages wont affect their baseline that much. In addition this will give them a bargaining chip in the future if they have to do some form of negotiation with the government.

So since the phone operators will be helping the government in tracking the offenders. We will be exploring ways of counteracting this in the next post.