Airtel Kenya Joins Competitors in Hiking Calls, SMS and Data Pricing

The past one week has been filled with telco announcements of hiked prices, thanks to the Finance Act 2018. So far, Zuku, Safaricom and Faiba have announced new pricing options that affect their customers, with some being friendlier than others.

Now, Airtel Kenya has joined the ranks with an announcement from the telco’s CEO that as from midnight today, Airtel Kenya subscribers will have to part with more coins to make calls, send texts and browse the internet.

In a statement sent to newsrooms by the company, the CEO, PD Sarma, blames the decision to hike said prices to an increase in excise duty, taxes and rising input costs. “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 effective from midnight tonight,” reads the statement.

This is to say that Airtel subscribers will pay Kes.30 cents more to make calls and browser off-bundle and Kes.10 cents more to send an SMS. However, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, Airtel Kenya says that bundled offerings such as Unliminet, Tubonge and Amazing Data bundles are not affected by the new prices. Despite there being an increase in Mobile Money tax, Airtel has remained reluctant in pushing this burden to Airtel Money consumers.

All attention now shifts to Telkom Kenya, who as per last week, were still deliberating on their next move in regards to the excise duty.