We can generally tell which phone number is Safaricom or which is Airtel and so on just by looking at their prefixes. Early May 2019, the Communications Authority (CA) announced that they have introduced new mobile prefixes for the Kenyan market.
The 01xx prefixes were done due to the 07xx exhaustion with demand from SIM card, mobile data and machine-to-machine communications.
Safaricom has announced the introduction of SIM cards with new 0110 and 0111 prefixes following the phasing out of the vintage 07xx prefix.
The new-prefix SIM cards will be available free of charge with customers only required to activate their lines with airtime top up of KSh.50.
Safaricom has also rolled out a new numbering system that provides its customers with the freedom to choose their own number rather than pre-assigned mobile phone numbers.
With the unveiling of the new prefixes, Safaricom now has the capacity to add 2 million additional customers to its network. Currently, the service provider has over 34.5 million customers.
Airtel was assigned 0100, 0101 and 0102 as their prefixes.
In the old system, Safaricom uses the 070x, 071x, 072x, 074x, 0757, 0758, 0759, 0768, 0769 and 079x.
Airtel uses 0730 to O739m 0750 to 0756 and 0785 to 0789.
Telkom Kenya uses 0770 tto 0779.
Faiba uses 0747 and Equitel uses 0763 to 0766
