Airtel offers Sh1 per minute holiday tariff

Telecoms operator, Airtel Kenya, has launched a promotional tariff plan that will see its customers make calls at the lowest industry rate of Sh1 per minute to all other networks and free on-net calls over the holidays.

The promotion dubbed ChapaStori requires Airtel customers to buy either Sh15 airtime bundles or a Sh30 bundle that is valid for 24 hours or three days, respectively, where they all come bundled up with free 100 minutes for on-net calls per day.

The promotion runs until end of January 2019. “We know that many of our customers will be taking time off to rest and reconnect with friends and family during the festive season. Therefore, we are happy to be launching this new campaign that is unmatched as it allows our customers to talk worry free.” said Airtel’s Managing Director, Prasanta Das Sarma.

Latest sector statistics from the industry regulator have shown an increase in Airtel’s subscriber numbers from 9.7 million to 10.4 million between June and September 2018, a growth attributable to the company’s new range of innovative, affordable products and services.

The statistics also shows that Airtel tripled its share of voice market to 33.3 percent in the 18 months to September 2018, piling pressure on key rival, Safaricom #ticker:SCOM.

The holiday bundles are targeted at growing the telcos’ customer base further.

Latest industry data covering three months to September show that Airtel’s share of voice traffic rose by 3.1 percentage points, making it the fifth consecutive gain in the past five quarters.

“The increase in voice traffic is attributed to introduction of ‘Vuka_2_Tariff’ that enabled prepaid customers to call for Sh2 per minute across all networks,” the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) said.

Airtel’s network reported an increase of 13.8 percent in local mobile voice traffic to 4.7 billion minutes in the period from 4.2 billion minutes recorded in the preceding quarter.