Nairobi, April 12 -- Off-network calls in Kenya have crossed the five billion-minute mark for the first time in a single quarter, signalling a structural shift in how subscribers communicate across mobile networks amid falling interconnection costs and evolving pricing dynamics.

Off-net calls refer to the telephone calls you make to a person outside your operator's network, for example, calling someone on the Safaricom network using your Airtel SIM card.

Latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows that off-net voice traffic rose to 5.3 billion minutes in the three months to last December, up from 4.3 billion minutes in a similar period a year earlier.

This came as on-net calls - those made within the same network ...