Leading telecommunications firm Safaricom will be the only network provider transmitting poll results during the repeat presidential elections set for October 26th.
This is after the electoral commission dropped Airtel Kenya and Telkom in a move aimed at avoiding hitches that were the subject of nullification of the August poll.
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati has cited Safaricom's extensive network coverage for the award of the transmission deal.
“Safaricom will be requested to deploy KIEMS kits tablet SIM cards in all the 40,883 polling stations across the country,” the IEBC chairman stated in a message to the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA).
During the August poll, the three mobile network companies were hired to provide connectivity between polling centres and IEBC's national tallying centre in 78 percent of the country with 3G and 2G network connections.
A quarter of all polling stations in the country with poor network connections were covered by satellite phones.
Safaricom's network was deployed in 22 countries, Airtel's in14 while Telkom was in 11 counties.
Part of the issues raised by the Supreme Court ruling on the election petition was that the IEBC did not have all the tally forms during the result announcement due to network hitches.
Other reasons that questioned the authenticity of the forms is that some of them lacked security features such as watermarks, signatures and serial numbers.
The electoral commission vowed to announce all the final results of the repeat poll after receiving all the forms 34A and 34B, which will be transmitted through a secure network and their contents verified by party agents and independent observers.
On Tuesday, National Super Alliance (NASA) leader Raila Odinga accused Safaricom and French IT firm OT Morpho of abetting election irregularities in the General Election.
In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, Safaricom CEO, Bob Collymore dismissed the accusations as "reckless callous and unnecessary" noting that the company is ready to be investigated for the allegations.
