Update: Some users are reporting service availability. It, therefore, would seem that the issue is being rectified.
Older story:
This is one of the times when some services are not supposed to be offline. However, that is not the case with Safaricom Home Fibre, which has been experiencing downtime since yesterday at 8 PM. Twelve hours later, the product is still unavailable, and according to the carrier, the interruptions are affecting a section of its coverage.
In the first quarter of 2019/2020, Home Fibre was at the top of its game after it ousted Zuku from the number one position as the most used fixed broadband service. This was not the case in the second quarter because Zuku reclaimed its position.
Looking at the two products, Home Fibre is more consistent and generally a better offering, but it is slightly expensive. The recent cases of Coronavirus did not see any price adjustments: instead, Safaricom doubled the speeds, which is still a welcome move.
However, losing a signal for more than 12 hours is a new record for Home Fibre because even previous maintenance services have taken lesser time.
Safaricom has not given us a concrete explanation of what is happening on their end besides the normal ‘the team is working on the issue’ answer.
We are currently experiencing a service outage affecting a section of Home Fibre customers.
Our engineers are working to restore services as soon as possible and we are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
— Safaricom PLC (@SafaricomPLC) April 7, 2020
Another issue that has come up is the manner the carrier handles customer care responses. Yesterday, it took them nearly two hours to get a response. Of course, it is likely that the operator was trying to identify the reason for the downtime – and in previous cases, they would send a text message to apprise customers of service interruption.
Admittedly, the communication part is quite bad, and that is something that the operator has no option but to fix because there have been tens, probably more, of complaints across social media channels. In fact, even the 400 customer care number does not work as advertised because calls are sometimes never picked, or the system assumes you have talked to an agent before dropping the call.
Hi @sylmulinge. I hope it's not too late to talk.
I hate that our conversations are always on the negative side but here's the thing @Safaricom_Care sucks!
1. No internet on home fibre (but that's not your problem)
2. No calls being picked
3. No response on Twitter— Fintech Guy (@SaruniBM) April 7, 2020
This is not the right time to have an interruption because some people are working from home, and kids need to be entertained during this difficult time.
