Telkom in yet another attempt to woo internet users

Telkom’s CEO, Aldo Mareuse, serves a customer at the newly refurbished Telkom Plaza Retail Shop, located on Ralph Bunche Road, Nairobi, as the shop’s Team Leader, Faith Mbogo, looks on.

Telkom Kenya is making yet another attempt to grow its market share. This time, the firm is eyeing the growing internet market.

The telco Wednesday announced a new offering to subscribers that it hopes will excite the market and enable it to bag more users.

Dubbed the Freedom Bundle, the product will enable users to purchase a monthly 4GB (gigabyte) bundle at Sh999, which is in addition to daily and weekly bundles priced differently.

In addition to internet, the bundle also combines voice and messaging services and customers will be able to make free on-net calls as well as send text messages at no cost, both off-net and on-net. Users who opt in to the bundle will make off-net calls at Sh2 per minute.

“More and more people are accessing the internet on their mobile phones... with this service, they can turn their mobile phones into fully functional personal integrated communications devices,” said Telkom Chief Executive Officer Aldo Mareuse in a statement yesterday.

Telkom Kenya’s bid to grow its subscriber base is comparable to Essar Telecom’s YuMobile that offered free on-net calls and relatively cheaper internet.

While it was yet to get into profitability by the time it was acquired by Safaricom and Airtel in 2014, the firm had made inroads especially among younger subscribers.

Its new offering comes into the market days after Airtel Kenya launched a similar product early this month. Airtel’s 1GB daily bundle is priced at Sh99 while a monthly 1GB bundle goes for Sh300.

Voice calls

The offers by the two firms are in comparison to Safaricom’s pricing at Sh50 for a daily bundle of 150MB, Sh99 for a 200MB weekly data bundle and Sh1,000 for a 3GB monthly bundle.

The firm charges Sh4 per minute for voice calls and Sh1 for text messages.

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