Airtel sets flat roaming tariff for16 African countries

 

Receiving calls while roaming still remains free of charge for the first 100 minutes a month. PHOTO | FILE 

By OKUTTAH MARK

In Summary

• Airtel’s customers visiting these countries will now make calls back to Kenya at Sh35 down from Sh227.30 per minute and Sh12 from the previous Sh37 for making calls from Kenya to any of these countries.

Airtel has introduced a flat rate tariff for its Kenya subscribers travelling to 16 countries in Africa in which it has presence, reducing the cost of making roaming calls by between 85 and 32.4 per cent.

The countries where the new flat rate applies include, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, DRC, Gabon, Congo, Niger, Tchad, Burkina Faso and Madagascar.   

Airtel’s customers visiting these countries will now make calls back to Kenya at Sh35 down from Sh227.30 per minute and Sh12 from the previous Sh37 for making calls from Kenya to any of these countries.

Receiving calls while roaming still remains free of charge for the first 100 minutes a month.

‘One Airtel’ roaming is a service offer that enables inbound roamers or visiting subscribers from all Airtel Africa countries to be treated as local customers in the visited country in terms of pricing, including receiving calls free of charge while retaining their home SIM card.

“We have launched this preferential roaming service to ensure that our customers fully benefit from the advantages of Airtel’s presence across Africa, ensuring savings in communication costs for our travelling customers,” said Airtel Kenya CEO Adil El Youssefi.    

Sending an SMS message will cost Sh17 while incoming SMS are not charged.  

Rwanda and Uganda are not among the countries under the One Airtel network due to an agreement signed by the heads of state of three East African countries that reduced cross-border calling rates by 60 percent, as part of efforts to enhance regional integration.

Voice calls to and within these countries will remain the same at the rate of Sh10 per minute.

However, Airtel Kenya SMS rates to and within Uganda and Rwanda have been reduced to Sh6 up from Sh13 while roaming, and Sh10 for international SMS to the two countries.