SAFARICOM Now distances itself from DELAYED poll RESULTS...

Integrated communication service provider Safaricom has sought to clarify its role in the ongoing vote tallying and transmission. The firm’s CEO Bob Collymore in a statement said that the move was necessitated by numerous queries from the media and in response to public concern.

Collymore stated that Safaricom’s role in as far as the elections are concerned, was to provide connectivity between the mobile devices and the IEBC tallying centers.
Safaricom was given the responsibility of providing the virtual private network (VPN) for the conveyance of the results from polling stations across the country previously identified as having sufficient mobile coverage to the IEBC’s constituency, county and national tallying center infrastructure.

Additionally, according to the statement, Safaricom was to provide 17,900 original manufacturer warranted handsets to the IEBC for use by polling staff to transmit electronic results.

The CEO said that the firm has and still is fulfilling these duties. “The Safaricom mobile and virtual private network has remained robust with 100% uptime in all areas where coverage was to be provided,” he said.

Collymore added that the mobile devices provided are only a small percentage of all devices connected to the firm’s network at any given time.

“The total number of mobile devices provisioned to be used by the IEBC polling staff to relay results on the Safaricom VPN were 32,000, this represents only two per cent of the 1.5 million devices connected to our data network at any given time,” Collymore said.
The statement issued by Safaricom has come at a time when IEBC has admitted to technical difficulties in relaying results tallied across polling stations countr