Yesterday my bro came to me with a funny story of a red number calling which meant that you die at 1 am or something like that. I grilled him how the number would predict my death and he said he was being nice to the sister.

I laughed and reminded him of the movie one missed call, which had a similar story. He indicated that the story was going on Facebook and I can imagine it has spread very fast. I though it was only him.

But this morning someone raised the issue on a mailinglist and I wondered whether they were serious. Well, it seems am the only one not clued in because the Communications Commission of Kenya has just issued a statement to that effect.

I must say I am impressed by the way CCK has been responding to issues nowadays; from managing price wars to determining dominant player status in the telecoms industry, seems they are alert and I think it can only get better.

It also shows CCK is committed to ensuring the broadcast media exercises caution because it has reacted fast; maybe to cut the fear mongering. Maybe in hot political times, CCK will say that it acts all the times, whether political or otherwise.

Anyway, here is the press release from CCK....

The attention of the Commission has been drawn to SMS and email messages that are doing the rounds in the country warning mobile users against receiving calls from unknown or certain listed numbers. The messages further allege that receipt of calls from either the unknown or listed numbers would cause “brain haemorrhage due to high frequency”.

Upon analysis of the messages, the Commission has established the warnings are a hoax generated by unscrupulous people bent on causing fear and despondency among members of the public. The listed numbers are non-existent as mobile, fixed or international calls. In addition, the alleged haemorrhage due to high frequency has no technical basis whatsoever. The Commission, therefore, wishes to urge the public to ignore these messages and go about their business without any fear. The public is also advised to avoid fuelling the fear by transmitting the said messages to friends and family members either through SMS or email forwarding.

The Commission also wishes to call on the media, particularly FM stations, to exercise responsibility and avoid fuelling fear and despondency among Kenyans by dwelling on these baseless rumours.

We further wish to warn the originators of these messages that they are in breach of the law (i.e. Section 29 of the Kenya Communications Act, 1998). The Commission is already in contact with law enforcement agencies to ensure that the perpetrators of this crime are brought to book.

This is the latest info from the Communications Commission of Kenya.

..... its now official, Zain was sharp to wait for the row between Orange and GoK to settle, nice things have come their way....

The information communication technology sector has experienced tremendous growth in the recent years. With the maturity of the Kenyan communications market, consumers are increasingly demanding access to broadband services. As a result the move to 3G is inevitable particularly for the telecommunication sub-sector.

3G offers higher data speeds, more security, and more variety of services than the current 2G services. The bandwidth available to 3G devices gives rise to applications not previously available to mobile phone users.

In view of this, CCK will on Friday 25th June 2010 present Zain Kenya with its 3G License making it the second company in Kenya to offer the service.

Present at the cheque presentation will be CCK Director General, Charles J.K. Njoroge and Zain Kenya CEO, Rene Meza.

Last week, Kenya's ICT community discussions were dominated by the anti-competition rules, published by the Communications Commission a week earlier. The regulations targeted at dominant players in the communications market and their pricing structure.

Immediately the rules were published, Safaricom jumped to the defense, buying a full page advert condemning the action taken by CCK. The following day, other mobile players ganged up and bought a full page ad, congratulating CCK for leveling the playing field.

To an ordinary person, it may appear like the regulations were all about Safaricom and the other mobile services market players. But read the regulations and you will get that they go beyond.

For those who may know the ISP field, there has been complaints about some big companies that own the infrastructure, which they lease to other ISPs, the same giant companies have smaller companies which they use to access the end user market.

Take for instance KDN, it leases local loop to other smaller ISPs, sells service on Wimax and they also sell the butterfly service to the consumer market. If you are a smaller ISP buying the service from KDN, how will you make money while they access the same consumer market and can sell at a bargain?

The impression created by the mobile service providers is that interconnection applies to voice services; what about data and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP); we know some ISPs provide free on net VoIP calls but that doesn't help because calling someone in another ISPs is either impossible or too expensive.

What about ISPs that want to connect to mobile, the way Skype operates? That also has an element of interconnectivity and there must be some rule governing how that will be done.

Yes, Safaricom may have the most to loose but the way discussions are going reminds me of the Kenya Communications (amendment) act and how the media made it look like the whole act was all about the media.

If the rules are looked at broadly, we will see that even South Africa, Nigeria, among other countries are facing similar predicaments. If anything, the complaint has always been that the government has not been quick to develop rules; in this case, it seems to have pre-empted the market complaints (read the South African case).