Safaricom Home, as the company’s coterie of home connectivity solutions is known, has been around for a minute. As it grows, so are the needs of the users it keeps accumulating as well as challenges it encounters along the way.
The most notable of the said challenges has been the unreliable nature of the Fibre-to-the-Home service, Safaricom Home Fibre. With speeds that have been fluctuating like the stock market in volatile times for most of the last 3 months and behavioural patterns that are outrightly bizarre for a home internet service, it still leaves a lot to be desired.
However, while the concerned parties work on “stabilizing” the service and, hopefully, restoring it to its apparently lost glory – or whatever it is that they say they are doing/have done – they are still working on getting some other things right. Like making a strong case for the Safaricom Home app that launched in November.
Version 1.42 of the Safaricom Home app, which made its way to the Play Store over the last 24 hours, now lets users purchase home insurance for their, well, homes.
Through the app, Safaricom Home Fibre subscribers can go for any of the three home insurance plans available – HeroPlus, ProGuard and FortifiedGuards (names that are slightly different from what we had at launch) – something that may be necessary for those of us who have lots of valuable gadgets lying around just incase the worst (like it happened to Patricia Kihoro) happens. Or other unfortunate occurrences like fires or vandalism.
For some reason or the other, I found it interesting that the app changelog lists the ability to pay up to 6 months in advance as being part of the features added. I remember noting the feature’s availability when I took the app for a spin the very first time.
After a buggy start (which is understandable since the app has been under public testing) that saw users unable to sign in to the app weeks after it launched, here’s to hoping more and more features arrive to make it worth having alongside the main Safaricom app.
The general feeling in certain quarters has been that the app’s features could’ve simply been baked into the mySafaricom app and spared subscribers the need to install yet another app. While that argument definitely holds water, some of us are simply not fans of bloated apps *cough Evernote* and, with M-Pesa and everything else going on, mySafaricom already has its (virtual) hands full.
