Canadian company Iristel has announced its expansion into Kenya after winning a legal tussle against Safaricom.
This expansion provides Iristel with a presence in Africa, as it looks to expand its wide range of communications solutions to new emerging markets.
Iristel chief executive Samer Bishay says the company will begin with wholesale services and expand product offerings in the coming months.
“For this initial rollout of our global expansion, we will provide the capability to purchase Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks, which can be aggregated with our onnet footprint, and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs),” said Bishay.
The global telecommunications service provider entry into the Kenyan market comes after a court battle with leading local telco Safaricom that had initially blocked the entry of the Canadian-owned firm.
The telco will now offer internet-based calls through Safaricom’s network after Communications and Multimedia Appeals Tribunal struck out a case where Safaricom sought to terminate a contract it signed with Iristel Kenya Limited.
The firm's voice service offers an expansive, facilities-based local telephone number coverage and inbound voice origination service that enables over-the-top (OTT) and voice service providers the ability to offer innovative voice and messaging (SMS) services to their business or consumer end users.
This wholesale service aggregates all calls to Iristel-managed telephone numbers and hands it off to a single or multiple customer IP addresses.
Iristel customers use this service to deploy next-gen primary line voice services to consumers, augment their toll-free numbers with more cost-effective local numbers that also provide a local touch or create new mobile or OTT-based applications for consumers.
The service is unique in that it offers service providers with near-ubiquitous local service reach, network scale and routing flexibility.
Entry of the firm into the Kenyan market was delayed as Safaricom had sought to cancel the contract on allegations that Iristel Kenya will engage in SIM boxing which is a threat to national security.
