When Safaricom upgraded its Home Fiber speeds and cut prices this week, it looked like a big win for subscribers. It wasn’t.
Buried in the fine print was a separate change that most customers haven’t noticed yet: the Fair Usage Policy limits have been slashed across every package, in some cases by as much as 90%.
To understand why this matters, you need to know what an FUP actually is. Home Fiber packages are sold as fixed monthly plans. You pay your KES 2,999 or KES 6,299 and expect to use the internet at the advertised speed for the entire month. The Fair Usage Policy is the ceiling on that.
Once you hit the FUP data limit, your connection gets throttled down to a much slower speed for the rest of the billing period. You’re still connected, but nowhere near what you paid for.
In November 2025, Safaricom raised the FUP to a flat 15TB across all tiers, which was a genuinely good change. A Bronze subscriber went from a 500GB cap to 15TB. Gold went from 1TB to 15TB.
At 15TB, most households would never hit the limit under normal usage, which effectively made the FUP a non-issue for most people. That’s why it was well received.
Five months later, those limits are gone. Here’s where everything currently stands:
| Package | Speed | Price (KES/mo) | FUP | Post-FUP Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 40 Mbps | 2,999 | 1.5 TB | 4 Mbps |
| Silver | 60 Mbps | 4,100 | 2 TB | 8 Mbps |
| Gold | 150 Mbps | 6,299 | 5 TB | 20 Mbps |
| Diamond | 500 Mbps | 12,499 | 7 TB | 25 Mbps |
| Platinum | 1,000 Mbps | 20,000 | 7 TB | 25 Mbps |
Bronze dropped from 15TB to 1.5TB, a 90% reduction. Silver fell from 15TB to 2TB, down 87%. Gold went from 15TB to 5TB. Diamond and Platinum both sit at 7TB, still a 53% cut from where they were.
There’s also an unexplained discrepancy on the Platinum post-FUP speed, which is listed as 25 Mbps on Safaricom’s FAQ page and 50 Mbps on the Terms and Conditions page. Safaricom hasn’t addressed it.
None of this was communicated to customers. No email, no SMS, no press release. The changes surfaced in Safaricom’s FAQ and Terms and Conditions pages, which most subscribers never read.
The reason people are angry isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about the sequence of events.
Safaricom raised the FUP to 15TB, let customers settle into that expectation, then quietly reversed it while simultaneously announcing faster speeds and lower prices, changes that got all the attention.
READ: FUP: Why Your Internet Plan Isn’t “Unlimited” and How Kenya ISPs Implement a Data Cap
A Bronze subscriber today is paying for 40 Mbps but will be throttled to 4 Mbps once they hit 1.5TB. At 40 Mbps, a household that streams video, works from home, or has kids gaming can burn through 1.5TB in under two weeks.
The faster your connection, the quicker you hit the wall.
What makes this harder to defend is that Safaricom did the opposite just 5 months ago. The November 2025 FUP increase wasn’t framed as a promotion or a limited-time offer. It was presented as a product improvement.
Reversing it without any communication while running a speed upgrade campaign is the kind of move that erodes trust in ways that are difficult to recover from, especially in a market that now has real alternatives.
