Nairobi, July 16 -- Airtel lodged a complaint with the competition watchdog over Safaricom charging voice calls for as low as 10 cents a minute, underlining the rivalry between Kenya's top two telecoms operators.

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) revealed that Airtel accused Safaricom of running a promotion with voice charges that were below the mobile termination rate (MTR), which is the rate mobile phone operators charge each other for calls made across networks.

Airtel reckons that Safaricom charged between Sh0.1 per minute and Sh0.3 per minute, arguing that it was below the MTR of Sh0.41 and termed the action predatory pricing, which hurts small operators.

Predatory pricing refers to a firm that sets the price of a product b...