Safaricom discontinues unlimited internet bundles

Safaricom yesterday announced that from midnight April 30, 2012, it was discontinuing the sale of its unlimited data bundle product.
The unlimited data bundles, launched last year by Safaricom, were designed for mobile broadband users on their 3G handsets or 3G enabled modems to access unlimited Internet for a set duration of time such as the daily, weekly and monthly variations.

When commenting on the review, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore indicated that this decision was arrived at after a careful analysis of consumer trends. “As a business, we have found it necessary to focus our energies on providing quality data access to the majority of our internet users. This means that we have to sacrifice the provision of our unlimited bandwidth to a minority whose usage has had a negative impact on the overall data experience.”

In a statement, Chief Executive Officer Bob Collymore said Safaricom made the decision to focus its energies on providing quality data access to the majority of its internet users.

“This means that we have to sacrifice the provision of our unlimited bandwidth to a minority, whose usage has had a negative impact on the overall data experience,” he explained.

Safaricom Corporate Affairs Director Nzioka Waita said less than five percent of the company’s customer base on mobile data use unlimited bundles, however they take up significant bandwidth that has had a big impact on the quality of service for majority of users.

“The product is not profitable to the extent that the interference it causes with other uses and the uptake of other bundles. The 3G mobile broadband is a shared service; as soon as you have 10 or 15 users on the service and three or four of them are running a big torrenting service, they hog the bandwidth,” he revealed.

Safaricom has dominated the Kenyan data market with 90 percent of mobile broadband subscribers and over five million internet users, which has seen its competitors move to revamp their unlimited offerings to attract customers.

“Unlimited products currently in the market have speeds not exceeding 512 kilobits per second (kpbs). So when you get to a cap you are then lowered further to about 128 kbps and some instances 64 kbps. So, in fairness there is no operator offering truly unlimited in terms of volume and speed,” Waita said.

Waita added that there are a number of bundles for high users within the current limited bundles Safaricom offers.

“The heavy users who want unlimited bandwidth should consider moving to fixed broadband services like fibre or Wimax where they can consume as much as they want,” he said.

Safaricom, however, reassured its data customers that it will shortly be offering new internet packages to cater for its high volume usage internet customers.
Last month, Safaricom became the first mobile service provider in Kenya to launch the 42 Mbps 3G speeds in selected sites around Nairobi.