May 14th, 2007, Celtel Unveils Lowest Tariff In The Market At Sh6

Mobile phone Company, Celtel Kenya has unveiled the market’s lowest ever tariff- dubbed Mambo 6 at just Sh6 per minute on per second billing.

Celtel CEO, David Murray launched the new tariff in Eldoret at the weekend when he handed over a house to the first winner in the firm’s ongoing Chakaza Ushinde Nyumba promotion.

Murray said the introduction of what he called- a super off peak tariff, available to Celtel customers was a response to market’s quest for affordable mobile call costs. Last December, the company launched Uhuru tariff plans which allow its customers to call at a flat rate across all networks in Kenya. The introduction of the flat rate tariffs was Murray’s first hand immediately he took over as the CEO in December.

“Our goal as a business is to ensure we offer value to our customers. Communication is about freedom. We do not want to limit our customers to just calling within our network. We want to continually offer them freedom to call any of their friends, relatives and business partners in any other network in Kenya,” he said.

Celtel’s Uhuru Kwa Jamii tariff enables its customers to call across all networks at Sh24 per minute during peak time (5am-5pm); and off-peak for Sh12 per minute (5pm-5am). Murray said the company has seen growth in active customer numbers surpass one million subscribers since December when the new Uhuru range of tariffs was introduced.

The Mambo tariff which mainly targets the youth is expected to up the ante in a market that has traditionally offered consumer choice between only two mobile service providers. The Chief Executive also indicated that the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) had made a ruling in February this year, that all operators –fixed line and mobile, shall charge no more than Sh30 per minute to call competing networks by end of June. The CEO further noted that Celtel is the only network that passed on the interconnect benefit to customers way below the regulators maximum threshold.

“The CCK directive will bring the chickens home to roost by reigning in on the discriminatory tendency by certain players to penalize their customers for calling competing networks.”

Last week the company unveiled a new number series – 0737 – which the Chief Executive said was a clear indication of positive growth and announced that the company was currently engaged in expanding its network infrastructure to cover over 90 percent of the country by the end of the year at a cost of over Sh10 billion. The new prefix will allow an additional one million customers to enjoy the innovative services from Celtel.

“We are spending over Sh10 billion to improve our network infrastructure and shore up our data and voice service offerings as part of quest to be the preferred telecommunications provider in Kenya. We have a quality network with the most competitive tariffs in the market and this is fundamental to our growth as this is the value proposition to our customers and the wider public that consume mobile telephony.”

Murray, who has over 20 years experience in Mobile telephony markets in Asia, Europe, USA, South America and the Middle East, is starting to deploy his experience and hinted that this was but a tip of the iceberg.

“We shall continue to be very pro-market and customer-led so that our contribution to increasing accessibility to mobile telephone usage to the most remote parts of the country becomes real,” he said. Pointing out that a 10 percent increase in penetration, for instance, will push GDP by 0.6 percent – reflecting overall economic development in terms of jobs and per capita income at the household.