The exit of mobile Service provider Yu Mobile from the market is a blow to many Kenyans who were used to the unbelievable tariffs offered by the Essar owned company.
A significant 3 million subcribers will be forced to adjust their connection budgets from the ridiculously free call rates to Airtel's rates although they will retain there phone numbers.
The ailing service provider has been making losses to the tune of 3 Billion annually and since 2009 had accumulated up to 25 Billion in losses.
This leaves an almost perfect oligopolistic market with the leader Safaricom enjoying quite huge powers. the future of Orange is now in question judging from the fact that it had even less market share compared to YU Mobile which enjoyed 8.8 percent.
The implication is that subscribers are now left at the mercy of their service providers who are now price makers. Call rates have still been high even with the option of free calls at YU and one can only guess what will happen next with the continued rise in cost of living.
Kimulu a campus student in Nairobi says that he is now left with SMSes as his only way of communicating since for the last three years he has been in Campus Yu mobile had allowed him to make calls on a budget of kshs 10 a day!
"Now, I can barely talk for three minutes without feeling the pinch, when I used to comfortably talk for almost an hour on YU," he laments.
Him and many other subscribers will now have to adjust to tough call rates and offers that to them sound like jokes compared to ehat they were used to.
Roaming rates have skyrocketed owing to tariffs imposed by EA countries and with lesser players in the market hopes for contacting kins in the region are slowly being killed. Cost of data is in an all time high with the demise of unlimited data bundles even in 2G despite the growing need for real-time connectivity in every office.
***photo's courtesy of Yu Mobile, google
A significant 3 million subcribers will be forced to adjust their connection budgets from the ridiculously free call rates to Airtel's rates although they will retain there phone numbers.
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| A Yu advert showing the incredible offers of free calls that had revolutionized the lives of poor Kenyans. |
The ailing service provider has been making losses to the tune of 3 Billion annually and since 2009 had accumulated up to 25 Billion in losses.
This leaves an almost perfect oligopolistic market with the leader Safaricom enjoying quite huge powers. the future of Orange is now in question judging from the fact that it had even less market share compared to YU Mobile which enjoyed 8.8 percent.
The implication is that subscribers are now left at the mercy of their service providers who are now price makers. Call rates have still been high even with the option of free calls at YU and one can only guess what will happen next with the continued rise in cost of living.
Kimulu a campus student in Nairobi says that he is now left with SMSes as his only way of communicating since for the last three years he has been in Campus Yu mobile had allowed him to make calls on a budget of kshs 10 a day!
"Now, I can barely talk for three minutes without feeling the pinch, when I used to comfortably talk for almost an hour on YU," he laments.
Him and many other subscribers will now have to adjust to tough call rates and offers that to them sound like jokes compared to ehat they were used to.
Roaming rates have skyrocketed owing to tariffs imposed by EA countries and with lesser players in the market hopes for contacting kins in the region are slowly being killed. Cost of data is in an all time high with the demise of unlimited data bundles even in 2G despite the growing need for real-time connectivity in every office.
***photo's courtesy of Yu Mobile, google
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