The Finance Act of 2018 brought about sweeping changes to how some products and services were taxed and this includes Internet services.
Fiber services are included in this new tax regime where the excise tax was increased from 10% to 15% plus 16% VAT. This has led to the operators increasing the prices for their various bundles thanks to them passing over the cost to the consumer.
On one hand, we have seen the likes of Safaricom passing the entire cost to the consumer in the fiber offerings and the likes of Zuku who have absorbed the excise duty for their new customers for a limited time. Well, JTL is sort of doing both.
Jamii Telecom Faiba packages for Home are unchanged and according to the company, the taxes are inclusive so no additional cost to the consumer.
| Package | Price (Kshs) |
|---|---|
| 30Mbps | 5,000 |
| 50Mbps | 10,000 |
| 75Mbps | 15,000 |
| 125Mbps | 20,000 |
However, this is not the case for the customers for Faiba Business. To get the total amount needed to pay, you’ll need to add the 15% excise duty and VAT pricing and here are the new prices.
| Package | Old Prices | New prices |
|---|---|---|
| Business 15 | 10,000 | 13,340 |
| Business 25 | 15,000 | 20,100 |
| Business 40 | 25,000 | 33,350 |
| Business 60 | 30,000 | 40,020 |
| Business 75 | 40,000 | 53,360 |
| Business 100 | 55,000 | 73,370 |
This new Finance Act law has increased pricing for people who use fiber optic tech to connect to the Internet and the world wide web. The jumps are quite massive and it shows that life will become even harder in the next few weeks.
Jamii Telecom is one of the major players in the fixed data market in the country. According to the latest statistics from the regulator, Communications Authority of Kenya, Jamii Telecom had a market share of 11% with over 36,000 subscriptions.
