Zain Kenyan has applied for a 3G license in the country. The company is expected to pay $25 million for the license, and effectively join Safaricom which got its license back in 2007. Safaricom, BTW is now protesting the move of regulators to reduce the 3G license fees in an effort to get more carriers to build their own 3G networks.
After the paperwork is cleared, Zain expects to start the network rollout in the first half of 2010 and the procurement process is already in place, said Zain Kenya’s CEO – Rene Meza.
In the other Zain news, the carrier unveiled a new offering, allowing its subscribers to make free calls and SMS within the network based on the airtime top up. Prepaid customers will be able to call and SMS up to three Zain numbers for free for a period of seven days.
Finally, for those of you looking at numbers, Safaricom had 13.8 million subscribers at the end of June, whereas Zain only 2.4 million.
[Via: CellularNews]