Airtel takes price war to SMS

Over the past year, telecommunications providers across sub-Saharan Africa have engaged in price wars and as a result, rates have reached their lowest levels ever and are unlikely to go down further for some time to come, writes Computer World.

Rates for short message services (SMS) have, however, rarely been touched. But Airtel has fired the first shot in a likely price war on the SMS front by revealing a reduction in the testing rates where in some cases, a user has to pay a one-off fee to get access to free SMS within the Airtel network.

Airtel's offer is for major markets across the 16 operations it re-branded at the end of last year.

The battle between China and Western nations for business in Kenya is moving to the telecoms sector, as Asian countries grow their market share in the mobile handset and infrastructure market, states Business Daily Africa.

China-based firms such as Huawei and ZTE Technologies have been gaining ground in the infrastructure market and are now moving towards the retail segment with low cost mobile phones and Internet modems.

Huawei introduced one of the cheapest mainstream smartphone in the Kenyan market in partnership with Safaricom, which is looking at deepening the penetration of Internet among its estimated 17 million subscribers.

Expectations are high in Zimbabwe following news that the landlocked southern African state is on the verge of being connected to the rest of the world via a $22.7 million undersea cable, says The Zimbabwean.

“The work has been completed, including the laying of the cables,” says Nelson Chamisa, the minister of ICT, referring to the 261km fibre-optic cable linking Harare to the eastern border city of Mutare, which will be commissioned in a few weeks.

According to Chamisa, by 2014, Zimbabwe will be internationally networked, with about 1 340km of cables, carrying massive amounts of mobile phone, television, Internet and other telecommunication signals.