Somewhere in the process of opening a call centre, somebody will tell you that you need a licence from the Communications Authority. Sometimes they are right. Often they are describing their own obligations as though they were yours.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. But the distinction is simple enough to explain, and knowing it will save you an awkward conversation.
Using a service versus being a carrier
The Communications Authority of Kenya licenses the provision of telecommunications services. The framework covers operators who carry other people’s traffic, terminate calls, allocate numbers and sell capacity.
That is a description of your provider. It is not a description of you answering your own phone.
If you are a customer — you buy a call centre service, your calls are carried by a licensed operator, your number is allocated through one — then you are in the same position as any business with a mobile phone contract. You are not operating a telecommunications service; you are using one.
If you are becoming the operator — reselling voice to others, terminating international traffic, running your own switching and selling access to it — then you are doing a licensed activity and the framework applies to you directly.
Most businesses opening a call centre are firmly in the first category. Most of the expensive confusion comes from vendors in the second category explaining their costs.
The question to ask a vendor
If a quote includes a licensing fee, ask three things:
- Which licence, by name?
- For which activity?
- In whose name is it held — mine or yours?
A straight answer is fine. “You need a licence to use VoIP in Kenya” is not a straight answer, and it is not, as a general statement, how the framework works.
If the licence is held in the provider’s name, covering the provider’s activity, then it is part of their cost of doing business. It may well be reflected in their pricing — that is normal — but it is not a separate fee you owe the regulator.
What genuinely does apply to you
Being unlicensed does not mean unregulated. Three things apply to you directly, whatever your telephony arrangement.
The Data Protection Act 2019. If you record calls, you are processing personal data. You need a reason, you must tell callers, you must not keep recordings longer than you need, and the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has a view about all three. There is a longer article on this.
Consumer protection. How you sell, what you promise, and how you treat people who want to stop hearing from you.
The network’s own rules. The operators carrying your calls have acceptable-use terms about bulk calling, caller ID and unsolicited contact. Breaching those gets your service suspended regardless of anybody’s licence.
In practice, for a business running an inbound support desk, the Data Protection Act is the one that will actually affect your week. Licensing almost certainly will not.
If you are genuinely unsure
Two sensible steps.
Ask the Authority directly. They publish their licensing framework and they answer questions. An answer from the regulator is worth more than an answer from a supplier — including from us.
Ask a Kenyan lawyer who does this. If your plans involve reselling capacity, operating numbers for other businesses, or anything that sounds like carrying somebody else’s traffic, get proper advice before you build it.
Why we are telling you this
We sell call centre software. A vendor who implies you need a licence, and then implies they can handle it, has a useful lever. We would rather not have that lever, because the conversation that follows a surprise is worse than the one that avoids it.
If you use our service, you are our customer. The carrier arrangements are ours. What you need to get right is what you do with the recordings and how you treat the people you call.
The practical steps for opening a call centre are here, and the set-up costs are here.