If you’ve ever winced at your airtime balance after a quick call to someone on a different network, there’s good news coming your way.
Kenya’s communications regulator has announced that the fees mobile and fixed-line operators charge each other to connect your calls will be cut significantly over the next four years.
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) issued a new directive that sets out a roadmap for reducing termination rates. These are the fees one telecom company pays another every time a call crosses between their networks.
Think of it this way: when a Safaricom customer calls an Airtel number, Airtel charges Safaricom a small fee for “delivering” that call on its network. These fees have long been baked into the retail prices you pay for airtime.
That final step, receiving the call and completing the connection, is what’s called termination. The receiving network is essentially saying, “We’ll take it from here,” and they charge a termination fee for doing so.
Starting March 1 this year, those fees drop from KES 0.41 per minute to KES 0.37 and will continue falling each year, reaching KES 0.35 in 2027, KES 0.33 in 2028, and finally KES 0.30 by 2029.
The last reduction brings the rate to what a 2022 government cost study found to be the true, realistic charges of connecting a call.
These charges, known as Mobile and Fixed Termination Rates (MTR/FTR), had long been inflated beyond actual network costs, meaning operators were essentially overcharging each other, with ordinary customers quietly picking up the tab.
The regulator’s logic is when it costs less for networks to connect to each other, competition heats up, and operators are more likely to pass those savings on to customers through cheaper call tariffs.
Kenya has been down this road before; a similar cutback in 2010 triggered a dramatic price war among operators that sent retail call prices tumbling. Regulators are hoping history repeats itself.
The announcement also has implications for smaller telecoms. Larger networks like Safaricom, which receive more of these termination fees than they pay out due to their sheer size, will feel a pinch in revenue.
Smaller operators, on the other hand, currently spend heavily on termination fees to bigger networks. Lower rates mean lower running costs for them, which could allow them to price more aggressively and genuinely compete for customers.
From the CA directive, operators were given until February 15 to update their interconnection agreements in line with the new rules, meaning the transition is already underway.
Once rates hit KES 0.30 in 2029, the Authority says it will carry out a fresh review to take stock of where the market stands. For now at least, calling across networks in Kenya is getting cheaper.
