In two full page ads in today’s editions of the Daily Nation and the East African Standard, Zain has announced unprecedented low and permanent tariffs for both mobile calls and SMS messages to ALL networks in Kenya.

In a move that is clearly geared towards wooing a large number of subscribers from market leaders Safaricom, Zain has announced a new low tariffs of Kes. 3.00 to call any mobile network in Kenya as well as Kes. 1.00 per SMS message sent to any mobile network in Kenya.

This confirms that Bharti Airtel’s influence is starting to take shape at Zain since it was recently acquired with the rest of its African operations. Bharti Airtel is well known for having a low-cost and high volume business model that has made it extremely popular and successful in India.

In particular, the full page ads today have a clincher at the bottom showing that they are clearly targeting Safaricom by stating that “going green is not always the better option”. In addition, the ads also indicate that there are no terms and conditions attached to the new tariffs and that these are indeed permanent.

Going forward, what remains to be seen is how Safaricom and the other mobile networks in Kenya will respond to these new low-cost tariffs. However, in concluding, what can be expected is that revenues will most probably take a hit for all of them as they will have to match or lower the new tariffs to retain their customers. So, let mobile tariff wars begin afresh! 🙂