Because of what I do, I tend to hear company announcements, upcoming products, market projections and insider whispers long before they become public. One of those I have followed closely has been talk of Airtel Kenya 3G. If you don’t know what that is, just think of it as a really fast internet connection that is faster than your local cyber. Sometimes

I have been covering the company since it was Celtel; that was three names ago. When the firm rebranded yet again in November 2010 after India’s Bharti Airtel acquired 16 Zain African operations, one of the big announcements was that Airtel Kenya would launch 3G within the first quarter of 2011.

That deadline ended on Thursday March 31st if anybody is wondering.

At the beginning of March, Airtel even signed a deal with (Altech) Kenya Data Networks ’to upgrade its transmission network in readiness for the launch of its third generation (3G) network in April.’ The deadline had been moved once. It would not be the last time.

When the April flew past without a word from Parkside Towers, I asked some suits there what was happening. ‘Just making sure the network is ready for prime time,’ they told me. ‘Sometime around July’ was the new date for the 3G launch. Naturally, that also flew past and Orange launched Kenya’s second 3G network late August.

Discount

Airtel and Orange got their 3G licences at huge discounts. Safaricom paid a neat $25 million dollars (slightly above 1.6 billin shillings at the time) for its licence in 2007. But the CCK became turned philanthropic and cut $15 million dollars from the fee, to the chagrin of Queen Bee. So the newcomers paid ‘only’ Sh750m or so for their licences

But I digress. By the time Orange’s 3G went live, Airtel’s own had been spotted in the wild by many people in Nairobi and Mombasa. It even became semi-official and subscribers started buying bundles on the new turbo-charged speeds. But then, this happened:

Airtel took a break from sending 57 promotional texts everyday (what’s with that?) to talk about ‘optimizing’ its 3G network. It suspended unlimited data bundles for an unspecified period of time. It has not ‘un-suspended’ it to the best of my knowledge.

Intrigues

I was sad to see Rene Meza resign as Airtel CEO in early September and return to Tanzania as Vodacom CEO. I heard it whispered that he had increasingly grown frustrated by the the Indians who didn’t allow him much control and pretty much ran things from India. Not surprisingly, he was replaced by a Bharti expat Shivan Bhargava. He got the job but under a new title: COO. (Another Kenyan company also controversially did away with the CEO position last year in favour of COO and has been on a steady decline since)

By the way, Shivan has not given a single interview since his appointment. Not that we in the media haven’t tried, his handlers just seem keen to shield him from the public eye.

I also gather that the 3G network was in fact ready to launch by September but has been held back for unexplained reasons. Any traces of the 3G service have  since disappeared and I haven’t seen it surface for at least a few weeks. My phone doesn’t pick it up any more. And Airtel remains eerily quiet about it.

What gives?

Update: Airtel Kenya got in touch about the post and said this: Airtel has introduced major innovative business model changes in the last year. Our Networks and IT platforms are positioning themselves for stability and excellent quality. We will focus on being “the best quality network in Kenya” and fully leverage on this to provide our customers with the best quality experience”

Basically, this is PR-speak for saying NOTHING while actually saying something. Oh well