Revised Safaricom Internet Data Bundles

4 months into the era of the annoying changes to data bundles announced in March 2015. Safaricom in mid-July said they had heard the complaints of customers and announced improvements to the Internet data bundles.

These improvements addressed two of the issues I was most frustrated about;

• the lifespan of the data bundles; this is now back to 180 days (or is it duration of bundles plus 180 days), as long as you renew your 1, 7, 30 or 90 day Internet bundle before the expiry date;
• 10pm to 6am time-span for the night bundles - Safaricom have killed the night bundles and increased the total number of MB per bundle. Rather than spend KES 1,000 and get 2GB (day bundles valid for 30 days) and another 2GB (night bundles valid for 14 days between 10pm and 6am) I now get 3GB day bundles for 30 days for KES 1,000. 

There was no mention of the third change I was unhappy about in March, the beloved internet data sambaza (sending of data from one Safaricom subscriber to another). I hope Safaricom are working on how to restore the sambaza service with some modifications to address the resale of data bundles.

The other significant change announced by Safaricom in mid-July was the increase in the size for the 90 day bundles. KES 3,000 for 6GB is now the smallest 90 day bundle. One could previously spend as little KES 500 for 500MB day (and 250MB night) bundles. There were also KES 1,000 and KES 1,999 90 day bundles for 1.5GB (plus 750MB) and 3GB (plus 1.5GB) respectively. This is a shrewd move by Safaricom to push customers to buy Internet data bundles more regularly.

There was also a major increase in the largest data bundle package; a 30GB 90 day data bundle for KES 9,000. That works out to 0.3 KES/MB which is pricey for such a large data bundle. 

My cost per bundle (KES 1,000 for the 3GB 30 day bundle) is 0.33 KES/MB; the same as it was before the annoying changes.I also do not have to stay awake after 10pm or wake up before 6am to use my night bundles! I am therefore happy with the improvements made in July. So happy actually that I have upgraded my old modem, the amazing Huawei IDEOS phone to a 4G Huawei mobile wifi E5373 modem!

The key thing though is to keep track of the expiry dates of the Internet bundles, which I do using my calendar of the 4 devices I purchase bundles for; my modem, the Kuria household modem, my cell phone and my work cell phone! I have only received a reminder that the data bundles are about to expire on the work phone which is post paid.

I hope and pray Safaricom will reconsider the sambaza of Internet bundles as this is the most effective way for one user to manage multiple Internet bundle 'accounts'.