BD : http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/818676/-/hfp4mpz/-/index.html Telkom’s Orange has announced a 70 per cent drop in international call charges made from its network. The offer has been divided into six global geographical zones with each zone having different call rate charges. In the new tariff structure, subscribers calling to the USA, UK (Fixed), India and China which is in zone one will make their calls at Sh10 representing a more than 70 discount. Callers to zone 2 covering Australia, Uganda and Tanzania will enjoy their calls at Sh15 while those in zone 3 covering Europe, UK mobile, Middle East, Rest of Africa and Asia will be charged at a rate of Sh20. Zones 4-6 also offer very competitive discounts on these destinations. “Due to popular demand and requests for this kind of tariff this festive season, we are happy to heed our subscribers’ calls and rollout a discounted international rate…to keep in touch with family and friends in US, UK, India, China and Australia amongst other destinations,” said the firms chief executive Mickael Ghossein. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why are Telcos doing this? They are all using Voip gateways and still making more than a 1000% per cent profit on each international route. Cost for a premium voip call to UK, USA landline is around 2 Kshs, so why still charge Ksh 20/- for the same service? In fact Safcom is quite "guilty" of using voip for a long time while labelling its services as something else. Its use of voip was so evident in int'l callers Ids and also the sat delays. Since Safcom and the others have ideas on " one stop " services and want to conatin the ICT market, think it is time that skunks operated their own commercial voip gateway and made international services cheaper to kenyans. Its too easy....... Anyone? :-)