But there is the ripple effect of loosing subs to airtel. You can only do so much to lock in subs. with 50cts who in their right minds would not want to be on airtel... hata kama damu yako ni green kweli utakaa ukiona wengine wakipiga at 50 cts..
Safcom at the moment are fighting to try and retain as much subs within the network and to do this they have to appease them by lowering the rates but at the same time the infrastructure is really getting a beating as it is and if airtel were to go for this killer punch then safcom would have a hard time trying to support calls at sub 2 bob..

look at it this way. at 2 bob or below traffic will almost double at safaricom without adding any capacity and thus cause so much issues.. how long will subs keep up with a congested network.. am sure they will gladly move to airtel where they will get more for less

Apparently the on-net SMS that Safaricom charged 3.50 [for a long time] costs them less than 10cents!!! So when Airtel came in with 1/- [off-net] SMS, it caused a stir...

Bulk of safcom calls are on-net. so def on net calls would double. Ok the mass migration might or might not be massive that for sure no one knows with a certainity unless you are Karumanzila.
My point is Safcom cannot sit and wait to see their subs moving to airtel. But the problem is if they lower their call rates further down the infrastructure will start to cramble.
The capacity they are going to carry is what was projected for them to carry in 2012 at previous rates and after doing all major expansions.

@VVS i agree you on most but differ on these

As for Kenya's economy... We will benefit from lower calling costs! This will affect technological advancement hence shortlived

Airtel's expansion will bring higher-enf ENGINEERING jobs for Kenyans! false, planning for airtel and engineering is centralised in india their model is only touch services are required on site(watu wa mkono)

Airtel Africa HQ will be Nairobi. Jobs for construction folks + high-end jobs for developers & engineers! True for HQ its in Kenya already false for highend jobs i challenge you to walk into their HQ currently on 2nd floor at parkside towers and you will see mumbai or infact kerela for yourself(black indias)

NO VVS, the network has many different nodes, and Huaweii are supplying some nodes to safcom, infact siemens was the single supply of nodes to safcom before they opted out due to IN or switch issues sometime back. They now will start using alcatel also for LTE. so what am saying is the network has different nodes and depending on specs and cost operators choose the best.

As for Airtel, they had a single supplier in alcatel, thats when their network was supper, then they went into Ericsson and issues started today they use both Ericsson and Alcatel on the core its Ericsson on the BSS its multivendor.
And for information all the vendors have shop in nairobi and young Kenyas employed in them.