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| New CEO of Safaricom, Bob Collymore |
By Dan Muhuni
Kenyan consumers are rightly excited that the mobile phone company Airtel, now owned by Bharti Airtel, has kicked off a price war with just announced unprecedented low and permanent new tariffs call rate to Sh1 for its subscribers within the network, Sh3 to call and Sh1.00 per SMS message to any mobile network in Kenya. This huge price reduction caused such a storm of traffic on Airtel's network; they actually had connectivity problems with other mobile phone companies.
Safaricom, the dominant mobile phone company in Kenya, in other hand is owning up to the mobile phone tariff wars warning Kenyans that the tariff cut could cripple the whole mobile telephony industry in the country. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Dan Muhuni, the new Safaricom CEO, Mr Bob Collymore said its unheard off that our competitor is coming up with prices that we cannot afford to match up with. “to be sincere we have more that 13,000 employees in our call centres and we have some other employees who work with us and we cannot match up with what our competitor is offering since we have to pay our bills” added Collymore................... more of this catch up with my weekly ICT column in your favourite newspaper................daniel@prestigekenya.com
what do we make of the 1/= for a whole day being offered by airtel? Lastly is he -Mr Bob Collymore- giving a warning that some employees could be facing the exit door?
ReplyDelete@ William that is what i will be following up today.
ReplyDeletewill b waiting
ReplyDeleteThe network providers in Kenya should get their cards right and stop threatening that the telecommunications sector could collapse!! Safaricom ought to remember when they r boasting of all those workers at call centers, Airtel is looking for globally recognized experts to handle their IT issues and other linking issues. Cost cutting!! Doing what is core to their business. Airtel has got their strategy right.
ReplyDeleteMy Anonymous Safaricom boss did a stupid thing admitting all this infront of me n some media guys. He should get his PR strategy right u dont admit 2 a defeat. Safaricom should now start looking 4 money else wea nt from calls n SMS. PERIOD! Dan
ReplyDeleteFor once, Sufferingcom is really really afraid
ReplyDeleteMJ said he had the option to outsource the call centres out of Kenya, but felt that it was essential that Safaricom remain a Kenyan company with max of Kenyan employees.
ReplyDeletecool stuff. Airtel has hit them below the belt but how sustainable is the war
ReplyDelete