Safaricom, Telecom, Airtel Kenya and YU Lose Millions
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UnknownSafaricom, Telecom, Airtel Kenya and YU will continue
to lose millions due to the emergence of messaging applications. Smartphones
have brought new ways of doing things. Today,
most Kenyans use free applications to make their life easy. One of these applications
is WhatsApp. WhatsApp allows its users to send videos, pictures and text messages
for free. All that is needed is data bundles. The app makes the cost of sending
messages, images and videos by far much cheaper than sending through the normal
networks. This has led to a huge drop on
revenue for telecommunication firms Kenya.
Although Airtel Kenya, Safaricom, Telecom and Essar Kenya
have all expanded their capacity to handle multimedia messages, the number of multimedia
messages being sent by subscriber has constantly been dropping over the recent
years. Statistics from CCK (Communications
commission of Kenya) show that multimedia messages dropped by close to 15%. A report by CCK says that the cause of the
drop may be competition from the messaging application such as WhatsApp and the
high cost of using the MMS services.
WhatsApp allows its users to send messages at a very low
cost. With the tough economic times, one can understand why most Kenyans are
opting to use it. Just with 5MB data, you
can send hundreds of messages to several people. The average cost of 5MB data
in networks in Kenya is KSh 5. When you send MMS over the normal networks, you
can only send 5 messages with Ksh 5.
The apps are hurting telecommunication firms revenue all over
the world, not only in Kenya. Globally, telecommunication companies are losing
close to $10 billion annually due to Internet enabled messaging apps.
Although they hurt the profit of telecommunication firms,
the apps are viewed as a good thing to consumers who now pay less to send text messages,
pictures and videos. If this trend continues, there is no doubt the multimedia messaging
will be dominated apps in future.
Posted in
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