The devil’s in the details, so they say.
Following the announcement by Safaricom that it will be increasing (doubling, even) the bandwidth for subscribers of its Fibre-to-the-Home service, Home Fibre, many rejoiced and thought that, well, they would be in for a treat.
Turns out, that is not what’s going to happen.
Neatly tucked away in the service’s terms and conditions (as first spotted by ) are new introductions that alter the way the service’s subscribers use it.
Here are three sweeping changes that Safaricom is introducing to Home Fibre that you need to know about:
1. There’s a Fair Usage Policy
For as long as it has existed, Safaricom Home Fibre has had an “all-you-can-eat” approach, meaning no bandwidth throttling, at least on paper. Now, going forward, that will no longer be the case and the company has communicated the same.
In the updated terms and conditions for the service, Safaricom will be limiting those on the Bronze package to just 500GB per month and subscribers on all the other plans (Silver, Gold and Diamond) to 1 terabyte of data per month.
Upon hitting the set Fair Usage Policy, users will be subjected to snail speeds of up to 3mbps and nothing more until the end of their subscription period (month). Those on the entry-level Bronze package will have to make do with a 1mbps connection once they hit the half-terabyte ceiling.
Here’s the table shared by the company on the same:
While the move is, obviously, not popular with Home Fibre customers, especially those that we have heard from online (and including ourselves), Safaricom has an interesting look at things:
Far from the truth. The average user hits 350 GB in a month unless you are in the business of reselling, we are all good.^FO
— Safaricom Care (@Safaricom_Care) February 14, 2021
2. New connection fee
Since Safaricom rolled out its Fibre-to-the-Home product, it has never charged a connection fee to new subscribers, something that other internet service providers do.
Now, the grace period is over. New subscribers will be subjected to a Kshs 3,000 connection fee.
3. Replacement fee for the router
“If you do not carry your router when relocating, you will be charged Kshs. 6,500 as a replacement fee for the router,” Safaricom states in the updated Home Fibre terms and conditions.
