are free calls enough?[I am not a customer, but I have probably bought and discarded three of their SIM cards to coincide with some ongoing promotions. Too many people I call are on Safaricom, and until number portability comes along, (carrying my number to another networks) I am stuck with Safaricom]
Beside number portability, there are other things they need to sort out; Celtel has been losing
customers (23% down from a year ago), executive
staff (compared to the ‘stable' team at Safaricom and direction. The change of brand from Kencel to celtel to Zain only benefits paint and marketing companies (but there’s already a 'Z' brand in Tanzania and a couple of other African countries)
My biggest peeve with them is there are too many products; these are never promoted long enough to mature or register with subscribers and potential customers.
This week- For internet/data users - they have
Uhurunet - unlimited internet service, whose equipment is a USB modem costing 6,000 shillings [$95] and 3,000 [$48] per month for unlimited internet which is not bad [and this
compares well against Safaricom]
- For callers: Earlier this week they launched a six-month tariff with free airtime for people who purchase cheap phones (targeted at rural subscribers). And now from the
skunkworks group we learn that they have another new tariff with Free calls from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day (top up with 100 shillings to take advantage) -
will this be the one that gives them an edge over Safaricom? That's the problem with Celtel - great products, big marketing budget, but jumbled messages that confuse subscribers. In the last year they have advertised their lowest rate at 6 shillings (Mambo 6), 4 shillings (to 3 preferred numbers) and now 3/= ($0.05)per minute. That is three times cheaper than Safaricom, but who has the masses and who has the right message?
Other tales
- Opportunity: Nominate a worthy Kenyan to the
Generation Kenya program
- From Uganda and
GTV comes
pre-paid premium TV - subscribers can pay for their GTV pay TV packages using scratch cards
Experian Kenya: joining the
Kenyan credit reference pool is Experian in partnership with Quest Holdings.
-
Day 19 of the Safaricom IPO has 4,121 deals, worth 342 million ($5.42 million) Closing 7.20 High 7.40 Low 7.00 Last 7.20 and volume of 47.5 million shares. It’s well supported and Buyers must be sniffing out a conclusion to the de-leveraging process.
Commentary and data from Rich.co.ke - NSE data vendor [with Free real time prices between 0930 -1500]
