Many things have happened since Safaricom introduced Home Fibre more than five years ago.
The product, now, is in thousands of households, with a rough estimation that it will hit the 300K mark the next time the carrier releases its sector report (submitted to the Communications Authority of Kenya).
We also remember that Home Fibre was very reliable at first, and that is for good reason: there weren’t too many people using the product, so reliability and speeds were at their peak. This is, perhaps, what made it so attractive over the competition, and I remember cases where people had to move houses so they could live in a location that was served by the Home Fibre.
Of course, thousands of people using the service put pressure on the operator, and if this technical explanation is anything to go by (please read it), then the issues encountered in 2019 and onward could be addressed, but there are more business decisions to stop any kind of adjustment that could make all customers happy.
Fast forward to 2020, the pandemic happened, so Safaricom decided to gift users with double speeds for the same price. This would go on for the whole of that year. Until 2021.
This year, key changes were made. First, the speeds largely remained the same, and with ever so slight price adjustments for the higher-tier plans. This, to note, was the second time prices were revised after the 2018 adjustment that was prompted by the 15 percent excise duty in the Finance Bill, 2018 (and another price change is on the way).
Secondly, the changes arrived with a small catch; the carrier would throttle speeds if a certain limit was exhausted. All kinds of explanations have been given for this, and whether you agree with them is mostly a personal decision. For the masses, the cap does not affect them, but there are a few people who want their bandwidth untouched, which is also valid reasoning.
All that aside, I have one major gripe with the developments, and that is Home Fibre usage tracking.
See, when the cap was introduced back in March, Safaricom revealed that the 1 TB allocation (for Silver and above) was more than enough for their customers following an extended assessment of how they used the product.
Which is fine.
And customers, even now, could check their average monthly usage (accessed from the *400# menu).
That is all fine too, but we want more.
I should be able to see how much data I have consumed over a given month for planning purposes.
I also understand the psychological reason behind this hidden feature, but some of us want to be able to see our balances, and how the speeds fare once we have exhausted the allocated limit.
You see, this is a fair game: take something from us, give us a replacement to keep the relationship going. It is the basis of compromise for participating parities.
Of course, it is not going to happen, but it is freeing that these thoughts are put out there just in case some groups share the sentiments.
While you are here, check out why Silver is the best plan for all kinds of use cases, and why you should actually pick it over the others:
What’s the right Home Fibre Package for you? – YouTube
