[The Citizen] Mobile phone firms have cut tariffs. But a University of Dar es Salaam lecturer says they should have lowered the charges a long time ago because they have made a lot of money.
Cellular phone voice calls tariff wars are set to intensify, to the benefit of subscribers, a survey has found out.
It shows that some mobile phone operators are looking into the cut-back on data tariffs, which will make Internet connections through mobile phones affordable.
This is the propagation of the tariff competition in which mobile phone providers try to undercut each other's tariffs, a trend that some operators have described as unsustainable and unhealthy.
The war has been waged hard on voice tariffs and peaked recently with major network providers cutting their tariffs considerably. Tigo has launched the Sh0.5 per second after the first minute, 14 hours a day through the Tigo Thumni/Ongea Kama Zamani promotion.
On the other hand, Zain Tanzania has introduced a tariff rate of Sh1 per second 24 hours a day through its Uhuru wa Kuongea promotion.
And the market leader, Vodacom Tanzania, came up with Habari Ndio Hii.
This allows subscribers to make calls for Sh1 per second all day.
Sasatel has also introduced a new voice tariff of half a shilling, Sh0.5 per second, 24 hours a day.
Some analysts say Tanzania now has the cheapest calling rates in East Africa, if not Africa as a whole.
However, according to the dean of the University of Dar es Salaam Business School (UDBS), Dr Marcellina Chijoriga, the operators should have lowered their tariffs a long time ago.
"They (the mobile operators) have already reaped a lot. There is no businessperson who will do business without a profit. It is not a secret that the mobile operators have been charging us highly and thus the current trend of lowering of tariffs is mostly because of competition among them," she said in an interview with Business Week.
Dr Chijoriga is optimistic that fibre optic cable that has landed in Tanzania would ultimately lead to further reduction of communication tariffs.
While noting that the drives could be marketing gimmicks to baffle customers psychologically, the don hopes such offer help improve innovations in the telecommunication sector.
It is true that the price wars have benefited customers who are now able to make calls and talk for longer times unlike in the past.
"With these new tariffs I am now able to call my family in the village just to know how they are doing. In the past I would call only when there was an emergency or something very important," a petty trader at Mwenge, Mr Said Jaba, told Business Week.
Ms Zaina Msuya of Kawe in Dar es Salaam complained that the lower tariffs only benefit subscribers communicating
on one network while they have remained expensive for those calling customers on different networks.
The corporate communications manager of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), Mr Innocent Mungy, said the authority does not regulate tariffs on one network but rather they depend on the market.
"We only regulate inter-connection rates between different networks," he said.
The communications regulator introduced interconnection determination in 2007, in a bid to fix inter-connection rates between different operators. The rates sought to reduce prices charged for interconnection gradually from 2008 to 2012.
The determination has set inter-connection rates at $7.49 cents this year and $7.16 cents by 2012.
Tanzania: Telephony Price War to Intensify in Telecom Industry
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