Tag Archive for 'low'

Finally, Orange joins Kenya’s mobile tariff bandwagon.

Published on August 26, 2010 in Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: 2010, announcement, August, calls, cheap, Kenya, launch, low, Mobile, new, orange, rates, safaricom, SMS, tariffs, telco, YU, zain.

Well, looks like everyone is now on-board the mobile tariff (war) bandwagon that started last week after Zain dramatically lowered their call and SMS rates. In particular, after that announcement, YU immediately responded as did Safaricom earlier this week. Now, as of yesterday, Orange is the last mobile network to “hop on” with new reduced call and SMS rates.

Orange, as expected, finally announced a new low call rate of Kes. 2.00 per minute for Orange and Telkom Fixed calls. In addition, Orange also has a new low SMS rate of Kes. 1.00 for on-net messages. Lastly, Orange is offering FREE calls from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm on the Orange network for a fixed daily rate of Kes. 100.00 which is quite impressive by all measures.

So there you have it – we are in the middle of a full-scale mobile tariff war in Kenya and the irony is that there is no clear winner as all operator rates have now hit rock bottom. At the end of the day, its the subscribers who are winning, or so it seems? However, what I would really like to see is the same sort of aggressive price cuts for Internet services – this would really make things interesting as they are way too high at the moment.

A tale of CCK, Zain, Safaricom and YU.

Published on August 20, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: august 2010, cck, Communications Commission, interconnection, Kenya, low, Mobile, new, orange, rates, safaricom, tariffs, war, YU, zain.

What a week its been in Kenya’s mobile networks sector! So much has happened in such a short space of time. It all started on Monday this week when the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) announced a 50% price reduction on mobile network interconnection rates from Kes. 4.42 to Kes. 2.21. This action in turn led to Zain immediately lowering their call and SMS rates dramatically as reported on this blog thereafter.

Zain’s new low tariffs triggered a stampede of new cutsomers and as such its interconnection to Safaricom clogged up, leading to poor service. Zain then proceeded to blame Safaricom as the “dominant” mobile network for not upgrading their interconnection capacity in-time so as to accommodate the deluge of new customers signing up. Safaricom in turn noted that Zain had failed to inform them in good time to upgrade their interconnection capacity which they said pointed to Zain’s bad planning and ulterior motives.

As all of this drama unfolded, YU announced new call rates of Kes. 3.00 and SMS rates of Kes. 0.50 yesterday (YU’s SMS rates are half those of Zain). In the final analysis, we are clearly in the throes of yet another mobile tariffs war. However, no word yet on how Safaricom and Orange will respond to these new developments. One thing is for sure, Safaricom will definitely come back with something big, especially considering they still hold 80% market share in Kenya.

The Bharti Airtel effect begins taking shape at Zain with new low tariffs.

Published on August 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: 2010, airtel, announcment, August, bharti, calls, cheap, Kenya, launch, low, Media, Nairobi, phone, rates, SMS, tariffs, zain.

In two full page ads in today’s editions of the Daily Nation and the East African Standard, Zain has announced unprecedented low and permanent tariffs for both mobile calls and SMS messages to ALL networks in Kenya.

In a move that is clearly geared towards wooing a large number of subscribers from market leaders Safaricom, Zain has announced a new low tariffs of Kes. 3.00 to call any mobile network in Kenya as well as Kes. 1.00 per SMS message sent to any mobile network in Kenya.

This confirms that Bharti Airtel’s influence is starting to take shape at Zain since it was recently acquired with the rest of its African operations. Bharti Airtel is well known for having a low-cost and high volume business model that has made it extremely popular and successful in India.

In particular, the full page ads today have a clincher at the bottom showing that they are clearly targeting Safaricom by stating that “going green is not always the better option”. In addition, the ads also indicate that there are no terms and conditions attached to the new tariffs and that these are indeed permanent.

Going forward, what remains to be seen is how Safaricom and the other mobile networks in Kenya will respond to these new low-cost tariffs. However, in concluding, what can be expected is that revenues will most probably take a hit for all of them as they will have to match or lower the new tariffs to retain their customers. So, let mobile tariff wars begin afresh!

YU gets really low on cross-network mobile calls.

Published on November 17, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: drop, Kenya, low, Mobile, rates, tariffs, YU.

YU, one of Kenya’s newest mobile networks has launched a major offensive this week by lowering its cross network rates from an already low Kes. 7.50 per minute to now Kes. 6.00 per minute. This is really really low since the much larger Safaricom and Zain charge closer to Kes. 10.00 per minute within their own networks. This effectively means its cheaper to call from a YU phone line to say Safaricom than it is to call from Safaricom to Safaricom. What remains to be seen is whether YU will eventually make a big dent on its competition by charging such low per minute rates, especially when most networks in Kenya are seeing a serious decline in their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) over the past year.

pata ziaaada – orange kenya’s free airtime offer

Published on December 17, 2008 in telecoms. 2 Comments Tags: airtime, bonus, free, Kenya, low, Mobile, networks, orange, rates, safaricom, tariff, YU, zain.

It looks that the mobile network tariff wars just won’t stop! In today’s paper, Orange Kenya has launched a free airtime service similar to YU Kenya’s. However, the striking difference is that Orange Kenya will reward you Kes. 3.00 free airtime per minute for any calls you receive from other mobile networks whereas YU Kenya is giving Kes. 0.75 free airtime per minute. This is bearing in mind that Orange Kenya still has one of the lowest standard rates for calls within its network, to other mobile networks and Telkom fixed of Kes. 3.50 per miinute.

However, there is a caveat – free airtime on Orange Kenya is rewarded for every incoming minute after 10 minutes weekly. At the same time, the offer is not extended to calls from the friends and family numbers which normally cost only Kes. 1.00 per minute, as well as Telkom Kenya fixed numbers and voicemail. Finally, the free airtime offer is only valid until the 15th January 2008 so its cleary geared towards the impending festive season. Now, what remains to be seen is if Safaricom and Zain Kenya will also respond with free airtime offer.