Telecommunications firms in Kenya face fresh operational pressure after a High Court ruling barred automatic recycling of inactive mobile numbers, forcing operators to rethink how they manage dormant SIM cards in an increasingly privacy-conscious digital economy.
The judgment effectively disrupts a long-standing industry practice where operators deactivate and reassign unused numbers after a defined inactivity period, typically 90 days, to optimise limited numbering resources and reduce network inefficiencies.
Last week, the court declared mobile numbers part of an individual’s protected digital identity, elevating what had been a technical network management issue into a constitutional question anchored on data protection and user consent.
The decision introduces new compliance obligations for operators, who must now design systems to obtain explicit consent before reassigning numbers, in a move expected to raise administrative and customer management costs.
For years, telcos have relied on number recycling to manage a finite pool of mobile numbers allocated by the regulator, ensuring continuous availability for new subscribers in a market with steadily growing demand.
Despite generating no revenue, inactive SIM cards continue occupying network resources such as routing databases and signalling systems, creating a cost burden for operators who’ll now be forced to maintain millions of dormant lines across their networks.
In Kenya, however, telcos have not publicly disclosed the exact, granular operational cost of maintaining a single dormant line, and inquiries to industry leaders Safaricom and Airtel Kenya remained unaddressed by press time.
The structural cost challenge explains why operators have historically enforced inactivity thresholds, reclaiming numbers to sustain efficiency while keeping infrastructure costs aligned with active subscriber usage and revenue generation.
The latest court development complicates the balance as it compels operators to retain inactive numbers for longer periods unless users expressly relinquish them, thus expanding the pool of dormant lines within networks.
Before the ruling, Safaricom had in 2022 launched a programme dubbed Daima Service, allowing customers to retain inactive lines for a defined period without topping up.
Under the service, subscribers pay Sh200 to keep a line active for six months, Sh500 for one year, and Sh1,000 for two years, effectively transferring part of the maintenance cost burden from the telco to users.
“Daima is a service that enables customers to keep their lines active for a period of six months to two years without the need to top up… The service is only available to individual prepay customers,” says Safaricom in a promotion published on its official website.
The service targets customers who may be temporarily inactive, including those living abroad, in military or police training, managing multiple lines, or preserving numbers linked to services such as vehicle tracking and financial accounts.
Safaricom will now be forced to extend similar retention frameworks more broadly, including for users who do not opt into paid services but still retain legal rights over their numbers.
This is set to create a revenue mismatch where the service provider incurs higher costs maintaining dormant lines without corresponding income, unless regulatory adjustments or new pricing structures are introduced.
New consent management systems and notification frameworks are also bound to add to operational overheads at a time when telcos are already navigating pressure from falling voice revenues and growing competition in data and digital financial services.
Kenya’s numbering plan, like in many countries, is finite, meaning prolonged retention of inactive numbers could accelerate exhaustion of available number ranges if regulators fail to expand allocations or introduce alternative identifiers.
The court determination intersects with Kenya’s broader digital identity ecosystem, where mobile numbers now serve as primary identifiers for services ranging from mobile money and banking to tax filings and government platforms.
It also comes against the backdrop of a recent nationwide SIM registration drive that tightened the linkage between phone numbers and national identity, reinforcing the role of mobile lines in personal identification systems.
Over the past decade, the expansion of services linked to phone numbers has transformed them from simple communication tools into gateways to critical economic systems as well as access keys to public services.
The evolution underscores growing concerns around SIM recycling, where reassigned numbers have occasionally exposed new users to sensitive information such as transaction alerts, one-time passwords, and account notifications.
