Replacing the legacy systems in Telkom Kenya

Today is a new dawn for Telkom Kenya; it will officially rebrand to Orange, with a new logo and a new way of doing business -- from a sleeping giant to a competitive commercial entity.

Telkom is expected to compete with Safaricom and Zain in the GSM section, and there is no doubt Orange will do that. Traditionally, Telkom only offered fixed-line services but has rolled out the CDMA network all over the country.

But what will happen to the people at Telkom whose work was mainly to operate the copper systems? The legacy systems may be replaced with new ones that are more efficient, but what about the people?

Do you retrain the engineers who operated the systems to now offer services on the new systems in an effective and efficient way? Do you fire them?

One image that Orange will have to erase from Telkom is the public service mentality. But it must be supported by working systems. Huawei Technologies of China and Ericsson of Sweden are some of the companies providing equipment to Telkom.