Safaricom PLC has announced a scheduled upgrade to its services that will result in the unavailability of some services from Saturday, April 24, 2021, at 10 pm to Sunday morning at 9 am.
In a notice, the telecommunications company stated that SIM swap, all airtime top-up, tariff migration and activation of new lines would be unavailable during the period which would last for 11 hours.
Safaricom, however, disclosed that all other services including calls, data, M-Pesa, and SMS would remain available during the maintenance period.
"The timing of the maintenance activity has been planned to result in the least of inconvenience to our customers," the statement released on Friday, April 23, read in part.
The service provider further apologised to its customers in case of any inconvenience that might be caused.
The telco explained that upgrading of its systems was meant to increase its capacity in line with customer growth and to support innovation to meet the different needs of its subscribers.
Safaricom, which started in 1993, has introduced new features over recent times in a bid to improve services for millions of subscribers.
In March 2021, the service provider announced the launch of trials for the 5G technology for its customers.
The trial began with both individual and enterprise customers in Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Kakamega.
The service provider explained that the 5G network could support up to one million connected devices per square km compared to 4G which can only support up to 100,000 connected devices in a similar area.
"This makes 5G suitable for providing super-fast internet speeds in high-density areas and for linking thousands of connected devices such as in a manufacturing and supply chain management for businesses," the company added.
Safaricom users who want to use the service will have to acquire new handsets that are compatible with the 5G network.
