Just a few days after we lauded Safaricom for being considerate in more than doubling internet speeds for its home fibre customers, the telco’s fixed home data business is yet again in the news, but this time on the dark side. The service provider has secretly introduced a fair usage policy on home fibre customers that will throttle internet speeds once they’ve reached their set limit in a particular month. Basically, what this means is, you really don’t have unlimited internet at subscribed speeds.
What is Safaricom Fair Usage Policy?
Unless you are tech savvy, or have a keen eye on your internet consumption, you may not know exactly what fair usage policy means. In a nutshell, Safaricom’s fair usage policy means, there’s a limit of how much data you are allowed to consume at your package speeds. For example, you may have subscribed to a data plan with speeds of 8mbpss up to a certain amount of data every month such as 500GB. Once you have utilized the 500GB, your internet speeds will be reduced to for example 1mbps for the remainder of the month. And that’s what fair usage policy means.
The move is detrimental to heavy data consumers, who will now have to cope with throttled speeds thanks to fair usage policy. While Safaricom has assured customers that their decision was carefully curved from statistics on how home internet customers have been using their internet, it sure sounds mischievous, especially what their real intention is.
To be fair, there are some customers who have been reselling their internet, and maybe this could be the reason behind it, it should also be noted, innocent customers will suffer altogether. Additionally, fixed internet is preferred against data bundles for the simple reason of being a bit reliable and assured connection speeds for the subscribed month.
Safaricom fair usage policy caps on home fibre customers
| Fibre Packages | speeds | Price (30 days) | Fair Usage Limit | Speeds after Fair Usage |
| Bronze | 8Mbps | Kshs 2,900 | 500GB | 1Mbps |
| Silver | 20Mbps | Kshs 3,999 | 1000GB | 3Mbps |
| Gold | 40Mbps | Kshs 5,999 | 1000GB | 3Mbps |
| Platinum | 100Mbps | Kshs 11,999 | 1000GB | 3Mbps |
It should also be noted the telco has done away with free installations; new customers will have to part with KES 3,000 as installation charges.