NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 26 – New Telkom Kenya Chief Executive Officer Mickael Ghossein assumed office on Friday with a promise to grow the company to the second largest mobile service provider in the next four years.
Mr Ghossien was appointed at a Telkom Kenya board meeting earlier this week, joining the company barely two years after its relaunch.
“I believe the company in the coming years will remain number one in Pocket Switched Data Network (PSDN) because we are the incumbent and we continue to have a good network. We will be number one in broadband because we are investing in submarine fibre and in mobile maybe number two in three to four years,” said Mr Ghossein who joins Telkom Kenya from affiliate Jordan Telecom Group where he was CEO.
While accepting that the task ahead was not easy, Mr Ghossein was non-commital on how soon Orange will be launching a money transfer service like that of its two competitors Safaricom and Zain.
Mobile banking seems to have picked up in the country much faster.
“It’s a good product but not easy to implement because our core business is telecommunications and therefore we need to overcome a number of regulation issues for such a product to work,” he said.
Adding: “My immediate target is to have larger revenues and provide value for our shareholders.”
In the meantime Mr Ghossein is promising to meet the company’s dealers next week to resolve a number of issues that have seen them threatening to down their tools.
“They have some concern; we have some concern so I will be meeting them next week so that we can resolve the outstanding issues because I believe to achieve our targets. We have to work hand by hand,” he said
Former CEO, Dominique Saint Jean will be taking up a new role as Senior Advisor for the France telecom Group in East Africa.
Statistics from Telkom Kenya indicate the company has a two million subscriber base.
