Airtel Kenya launched a new bundled tariff last month to challenge conventional post-paid tariff models. This is aimed at taking on its biggest rival, Safaricom, as it seeks to grow the mobile telecommunications firm’s market share.
The UnlimiNET bundle allows subscribers to enjoy 20 free minutes voice calls to any network, 100 free SMSs to any network and 100MB data daily from as little as Sh50 each day. For Sh100 a week, one gets 300MBs, 60 minutes to any network and 500 SMSs to any network.
“We sought to find out the essential services that most of our consumers demand the most on a daily basis and what the new tariff does is that it allows users get all this in one bundle,” said Airtel Kenya CEO Adil El Youssefi.
Users who opt for monthly payments can either pay Ksh1,000 each month for 2GB of data, 400 minutes of voice calls and 2,000 SMSs to any network or Ksh2,000 for 6GB, 1,200 minutes and 10,000 SMSs. The service provides customers with free access to several services including Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram and Gmail within their subscription period even after exhausting their 100MBs of data.
The launch by Airtel is the latest move by mobile service providers to get more subscribers on services that have more returns compared pre-paid models and is expected to touch off a new round of battle for consumers. Recently, Orange introduced a new post-paid plan for individuals under the Orange Ongea plan which gives subscribers the option of Ksh1,000 or Ksh3,000 monthly bundles to access mobile voice and data services.
Figures from the Communication Authority of Kenya indicate that pre-paid mobile subscribers continue to dominate the customer portfolio for all three mobile service providers with more than 99 per cent of subscribers falling in this bracket. However, the number of post-paid subscriptions registered the largest growth in the last quarter, recording a 9.6 per cent jump compared to 1.1 per cent in the number of pre-paid subscribers.
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