Tag Archive for 'YU'

Finally, Orange joins Kenya’s mobile tariff bandwagon.

Published on August 26, 2010 in Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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.

YU’s Low Cost Data Bundles.

Published on May 1, 2010 in Uncategorized. 47 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

In a recent post, I had (inaccurately) said that Zain Kenya had launched some new low cost prepaid and postpaid data bundles. As it turned out, unknown to me at the time, Zain had actually launched the bundles late last year but they only really stared promoting them (aggressively) over the last week or so.

Therefore, on this post, rather than make the same mistake, I would just like to point out some “new” information that has come to my attention this week. YU which is Kenya’s third mobile network in terms of total subscribers has launched a range of low cost prepaid limited and unlimited use data bundles.

The rates are even lower than Zain Kenya’s, although, once again, they are only available on 2.5G speeds. In addition, the YU data modem costs are also lower than the competition at Kes. 1,799.00. The details on the bundles are as follows:

  • Unlimited Daily: Kes. 49.00
  • Unlimited Monthly: Kes. 999.00
  • 100 MB Data Bundle: Kes. 250.00
  • 250 MB Data Bundle: Kes. 500.00
  • 750 MB Data Bundle: Kes. 1,000.00
  • 3 GB Data Bundle: Kes. 2,000.00

YU launches yuCash Mobile Money in Kenya

Published on December 16, 2009 in Uncategorized. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

In the news today, YU, Kenya’s fourth mobile network has (finally) launched its mobile money service, yuCash. The service is being powered by Obopay which is a well-established and global mobile money system. YU intends the service to be operational not just in Kenya but throughout Africa wherever it intends to establish operations.

In rolling out yuCash, YU is has partnered with Equity Bank to deliver services throughout its extensive branch network in Kenya, and presumably in Uganda where it also has a significant footprint. In Kenya alone, Equity Bank has over 4 million account holders making it the largest bank in this respect. It also means that YU could get many Equity Bank customers to sign-up for yuCash by default which could be a key factor for services uptake.

yuCash is now effectively Kenya’s third mobile money service after the wildly successful M-Pesa service from Safaricom and Zain’s Zap service. However, by using Obopay for yuCash’s back-end, YU has upped the ante since Obopay is NOT just a mobile money service. Using Obopay, its also possible to make Internet payments for goods and services with registered merchants and service providers who are part of the Obopay ecosystem. As a result, yuCash could (potentially) become a default e-commerce platform for Kenya and the broader African region.

However, what remains to be seen is how much traction yuCash will gain considering its coming to the mobile money game quite late with Safaricom’s M-Pesa having a dominant lead in the marketplace. Having been the first to launch and also having the largest number of users to-date. M-Pesa is very well entrenched in the psyche of users in Kenya as the de facto mobile money service. But, M-Pesa is yet to evolve into a more sophisticated and extensible mobile money system like Obopay which could become its Achilles heel.

YU gets really low on cross-network mobile calls.

Published on November 17, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

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.

Zain Kenya lowers Internet charges by 25%

Published on July 3, 2009 in random. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

In the news today, Zain, Kenya’s second largest mobile network has lowered its internet charges by approximately 25%. The move is expected to increase the number of subscribers that Zain has to-date by making internet access significantly more affordable, country-wide. It also means that Zain is responding to the recent announcements by Orange, Safaricom and YU who have all also dropped their internet charges over the last few months.

In order to sign-up for Zain’s internet service and data modem, subscribers will now only have to pay Kes. 2,995, down from Kes. 3,999.00. In addition, subscribers to the service will now only have to make a deposit of Kes. 5,000.00, down from Kes. 10,000.00. It would appear that like all its major competitors, Zain intends to become a major player in the Kenya’s fast growing internet market – especially when the SEACOM, TEAMS and EASSY high speed undersea cables go live this and next year.

Orange Kenya’s “Niaje” Tariff and Safaricom Live

Published on June 24, 2009 in random. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

In the newspapers today, Orange Kenya has launched a new tariff, “Niaje”. The new tariff clearly demonstrates that Kenya’s mobile networks are not yet done with their “tariff wars”. Niaje has a very competitive per minute rate of Kes. 4.00 for both Orange to Orange calls and Orange to Telkom Kenya calls. It also costs only Kes. 8.00 per minute to call other mobile and fixed line networks in Kenya. Going forward, what remains to be seen is how Safaricom, Zain and YU will respond to the Niaje tariff but at the end of the day its the customer who wins with inexpensive call rates!

Also in the newspapers today are full page ads promoting Safaricom Live. Safaricom Live is Safaricom’s mobile content portal which has all sorts of downloads including ringtones, videos, wallpapers, games, etc. I had written about this service a couple of months back and was very concerned that Safaricom was basically competing with its value added services (VAS) partners – It seems to me that they are going full throttle (anyway) with Safaricom Live as a way of growing their data-based revenue. I tried getting into the service this morning, both on mobile and via my PC – It took ages to pull it up and timed out often! Looks like their subscribers are banging to get in and Safaricom may have underestimated online traffic after they ran the full page ads!

Kenya’s YU mobile network to enter Uganda.

Published on June 10, 2009 in random. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Kenya’s YU mobile network is set to go regional by starting operations in Uganda later this year. India’s Essar Group, and owners of Essar Kenya Limited who operate the YU mobile network have been granted a license to operate in Uganda. It would seem logical to make YU an East African mobile network brand since many Pan-African mobile networks have been using the the same strategy such as Zain, MTN, and Vodacom. However, the last time I checked Uganda had around four mobile networks already operational in the form of Orange, Zain, Mango and MTN – can the market therefore sustain a fifth entrant into the marketplace? Something’s got to give and its at times like these that consolidation in the form of mergers and acquisitions start to happen. The full story on YU’s regional push can be read at the Business Daily here>

Kenya’s Prepaid Mobile Internet Shootout.

Published on May 2, 2009 in random. 15 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Forget all the amazingly low voice and sms offers that Kenya’s four mobile networks have been promoting over the last year or so. At the end of the battle, what became obvious is that subscribers had grown by leaps and bounds but the average revenue per user (ARPU) had dropped significantly. To this end, Safaricom, Zain, Orange and YU have had to change tact and are now aggressively pushing their data offerings.

The interesting intrigue in all of this mobile data frenzy of offerings is that Safaricom is still the only mobile network in the marketplace that has 3G whilst the other three mobile networks are only offering GPRS and EDGE services which are significantly slower. This prompted me to do some additional research to see what each mobile network in Kenya is offering and how much they charge. The results, are as follows:

YU

YU is the newest of all the mobile networks in Kenya. They have a tough road a head of them as all the previous entrants have had time to build their respective subscriber bases substantively. Therefore, its no suprise that they finally (officially?) launched their GPRS/EDGE prepaid mobile internet services last week at one of the lowest rates in the marketplace. YU is offering its prepaid internet services at a fixed rate of Kes. 3.00 per megabyte. The interesting characteristic of this offer is that there is no bundle required to access the rate. It will be interesting to see how YU performs with its offer in the coming months since its a cost-effective pay-as-you-go service that would make it appealing to most Kenyans.

Safaricom

Safaricom has been aggressively marketing its various 3G data bundles for the past year or so. However, at the same time, the 3G data rates have been dropping significantly since they started marketing the service. I have personally been on Safaricom’s 3G for the past couple of months and what a revelation it is! Its fast, really fast compared to any other Internet service I have used in Kenya to-date. However, the limited use data bundles are kind of pricey and as a result one is always cautious of how much internet they are using. As things currently stand, Safaricom has the following bundles:

  • 300 megabyte bundle for Kes. 999.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 3.33
  • 700 megabyte bundle for Kes. 1,999.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 2.85
  • 1 gigabyte bundle for Kes. 2,499.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 2.44

However, the rate per megabyte goes to up Kes. 8.00 per megabye when one exhausts their bundle.

Orange

Orange has the widest range of internet access offerings based on its GSM, CDMA, EVDO and Fixed Line services. For the purposes of this comparison, I have focussed on their prepaid Internet Everywhere offering which has a “bundled” approach similar to Safaricom although its GPRS/EDGE based. The default rate outside the bundles is fixed at Kes. 7.00 per megabyte which is not bad at all. The following are the Orange Internet Everywhere bundles:

  • Daily bundle is 50 megabytes for Kes. 150.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 6.00
  • 50 megabyte bundle for Kes. 250.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 5.00
  • 100 megabyte bundle for Kes. 450.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 4.50
  • 250 megabyte bundle for Kes. 850.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 3.40
  • 2 gigabyte bundle for Kes. 2,000.00 with a per megabyte rate of Kes. 1.00

Zain

Zain has been in the marketplace almost as long as Safaricom has. Therefore, its surprising to see that they have not yet upgraded their network to offer 3G yet and they are still using the GPRS and EDGE standards for their internet services. I am not certain as to how up to date their web site is but I just checked and their prepaid offer for mobile internet is Kes. 20.00 per megabyte (is this really correct?) which would make them the most expensive mobile network in the country for the prepaid mobile internet user.

How low can YU go?

Published on March 4, 2009 in random. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Earlier this week, YU which is Kenya’s fourth mobile network launched its Umenoki tariff offer. Umenoki is a Kenyan “sheng” (slang) word that by literal translation means “are you crazy?!”. To be honest, the Umenoki offer does seem crazy since YU subscribers can will be charged only Kes. 50 cents per minute for YU to YU calls all day and night after making a call of at least 2 minutes long beforehand. This is by far the lowest tariff offer in the marketplace currently and is a clear demonstration that YU plans to grow its modest subsrciber base in both Mombasa and Nairobi where the network is currently operational.