Mobile telecommunications customers in Uganda can now spend less on voice calls following the introduction of free unlimited WhatsApp services by Vodafone Uganda.
The new mobile operator announced free unlimited WhatsApp calls to its customers until December 31, 2015 last week, in an effort to empower them to do more with the company’s service.
Vodafone’s free WhatsApp calls’ offer comes less than three weeks after both Airtel and MTN Uganda announced that they had slashed their rates for calls per second to shs3 or shs180 per minute to any number in Uganda. For customers to access the service, they are required to recharge their mobile phones with any airtime vouchers between shs2, 500 and shs20,000. The offers come with free voice calls ranging from 10 to 50 minutes on top of the data purchases.
The renewed price war comes on the back of rising inflation which has affected purchasing power in the economy. According to the Consumer Price Index for the month of September, the Annual Headline Inflation for the year ending September 2015 increased to 7.2 percent, compared to the 4.8 percent that was recorded for the year ended August 2015 according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics September report.
The race for voice customers by mobile operators also follows the recent announcement by Vodafone that it had hit 100,000 customers in the market only seven months into its operations. According to Vodafone Uganda CEO Allan Richardson, achieving this milestone in the first seven months of launching operations in Uganda is a demonstration of the confidence that Ugandans have in Vodafone’s products and services.
“We are ahead of schedule to be serving our 100,000th customer and delighted to be reaching this milestone so early in our business in a very competitive telecom market. Because our customers have chosen to trust us, we are making the commitment to continuously improve our product and service offering as well as our voice and data network,” he said.