Safaricom cuts Kenyan SMS rates

Kenya’s integrated communications firm, Safaricom has significantly reduced its SMS rates across all local networks. Readers will recall that Safaricom pioneered commercial mobile money transfer globally through its award winning M-PESA operation.

Under the new tariff subscribers save up to 71 per cent when sending text messages.

Announcing the new tariffs, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said the reduced SMS rates are a permanent tariff proposition applicable to ALL PrePay and PostPay subscribers.

“We are lowering the cost of sending text messages to any local network by giving our entire subscriber base an SMS rate of Kshs 1/- for Safaricom to Safaricom and Kshs 2/- for SMS’s from Safaricom to other local networks,” said Mr Collymore.

With the new SMS rates, Safaricom subscribers will make savings of up to 71 per cent, when sending Safaricom to Safaricom SMS’s, and savings of up to 60 per cent when sending SMS’s to other local networks.

Growing from its cradle in mobile voice services, Safaricom has evolved into a total telecoms company. The firm, which has a subscriber base of over 17 million, offers all telecoms services under one roof: mobile and fixed voice and data services on a variety of platforms: Kenya’s widest and only 3G network; a growing fibre optic cable footprint and its most expansive WIMAX presence.