Amid the increase of tariffs by telcos, Telkom has launched the lowest voice bundles in the market and now customers will make voice calls for as low as Ksh 1:50 cents per minute and will also be able to make 10-minute voice calls at Ksh 19 translating to Ksh 1.9 a minute, with a validity of 24hours.
A week after Safaricom increased tariff on voice calls, data and SMS, other mobile players joined following a recently passed Finance Act 2018 increase duty on mobile services to 15 percent up from 10 percent and a 15 percent tax on internet services.
Statements sent to newsrooms from both Airtel and Telkom Kenya indicate that there will be an increase in data and SMS tariffs by 30 cents and 10 cents respectively. However, the telcos will be making no increases on mobile money rates.
“In view of the recent increase in excise duty, other taxes and rising input costs, we are constrained to increase our headline voice and data tariffs by 30 cents each and our SMS tariff by 10 cents,” said Prasanta Das Sarma, Airtel Managing Director.
According to an earlier statement by Telkom, subscribers will be incurring the following costs; Off-net calls at Sh3.30 per minute, on-net calls at Sh2.30 per minute and SMS (any-net) at Sh1.10 per SMS. In addition, our pay-as-you-go (PAYG) price for mobile data will also see an increase of 30 cents per MB. This translates to a new pay-as-you-go price of Sh4.30.
With the just-announced voice bundles from Telkom, subscribers will incur less than their counterparts on Airtel and Safaricom.