Kenyans smile as phone calls get cheaper

  1. Posted on Thursday 2 September 2010 - 17:47
    alberto
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    Neville Omondi, VoicesofAfrica alumnus in Nairobi, Kenya
    Kenyans are laughing all their way to the phone bills courtesy of the ongoing mobile company price wars.
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    Calling rates have became the cheapest ever both for on the network calls and out of the networks. Kenyans who has been longtime feeling that mobile phone companies have been raking huge profits at their expense can know make calls without sticking their thumbs on the 'end call' button.

    This comes after one of the main mobile network company Zain slashed their phone call and sms prices by more than 50 percent in a move tackle the dominant Safaricom. Just hours later another company Yu (Essar's) lowered its calling rates to match Zain's. Eyes were on the remaining two mobile companies that had not reacted, Safaricom and Telkom's Orange mobile network.

    Orange network went on to reduce its prices after Safaricom introduced a month's long promotion offer call rates. All these happened in a little more than a week.

    This 'war' however did not stay away from controversy as Zain accused it main rival Safaricom of limiting its internetwork connection capacity making some Zain customer get errors when they try making Safaricom bound calls. This was seen by some industry players as a desperate move by the latter to curtail the competition, an allegation Safaricom strongly denied blaming Zain for not giving them a seven-day notice on interconnect capacity increase as required. Orange however said some of the price reductions are unrealistic and not sustainable.

    The telecommunication industry will now have shift their focus to data services provision to boost their revenues and also as another growing market.

    Safaricom commands more than 70 percent of the total more subscriber followed distantly by Zain and the other two, Essar's Yu and Telkom's Orange. Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK ) applauded the competition.

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