Guys guys guys!!! No need to be emotional. Safcom made a very intelligent business decision. According to statistics 1% of Safcom users were using 70% of the bandwidth leaving only 30% for the other 99%. Most of them were on unlimited!

Safcom had better piss off 1% of their customer and have a very happy 99% - and save on bandwidth usage at the same time. Talk of killing two birds with one stone.

As @Ash Ock said, most of these unlimited subscribers are a total loss. Downloading 30GB at 1,000/= ni hasara tupu. "Normal" users [who form 99% of the clientele] would pay 20,000/= for the same and be happy because the network is now faster!


NB: I am not a Safcom employee but I can see their business sense.

I use 200MB per month at a cost of 250 normal usage but whenever I want to download you-tube clips, pdf books, music and videos surely I will need unlimited bundle!

I understand. And unfortunately you are an "innocent" bystanders.

Guess what you are going to do. You are going to stick with Safcom and when you want to download, you do it on Orange or Airtel [hence clogging those networks with other downloaders] and then come back to Safcom for your hustle free "normal" browsing. It will even get worse for those networks with "unlimited" offers because with time people will start batching their downloads. You simply identify all the books, videos, movies, youtube clips/lectures etc you want to download over a given period of time and then get yourself "unlimited" and leave you machine on 24/7 downloading for a couple of days. Guess what that will do to these networks and their speeds. Eventually most people will be on Safcom - for normal everyday surfing and switch to Orange/Airtel for the occasional bandwidth hogging, loss making [extremely low cost per mb ratio] downloading. Guess who will be laughing all the way to the bank!

Internet costs have gone down by a HUGE margin. In the office for example, we have 4 times the bandwidth we had four years ago and we are paying less than half what we were paying back then. Do the math.

Obviously in most cases, Kenyans would want the cost to go down to zero!

These companies have to recoup the capital investment before passing all the benefits to the customers. And even then, they don't have to. As someone said, these businesses are not charitable organizations. If I can make 200% or 300% profit why would I want to reduce it without demand and supply pressures. Small time business people make such profits everyday. Why not me? And in any case, that money is what I will use to bring in new products to the market. Do you think Apple and Microsoft would be where they are if they were "broke" companies borrowing to fund innovations and acquire competitors?

I agree with you though. Prices can still go lower and they will. But we've made great strides!

You are the kind of guys Moi used to tell things like "Safaricom sio ya mama yako!".

This is a liberalized market and Safcom is NOT a monopoly. Vote with your feet. If you can't afford a cab to Westlands, take a matatu [nissan]. If you can't afford that take a Starbus. It doesn't help to yap about how the cab is charging 1,000/= and how the government should ingilia kati and yet there is a starbus with the conductor screaming "Ten bob Westlands". Get into the starbus and let the cab price itself out of the market if it gets to that.

Even with simple things like yoghurt and the like, prices differ tremendously! There is yoghurt from brookside for example, that goes for 270/= for a 500ml pack and yet others are selling the "same" at 80/= and less. Pick the one you want or think is worth it and hit the road!

For things that are monopolized or you are FORCED like NHIF contributions, you can complain. The rest you make a choice.