Safaricom scraps night bundles, introduces roll over of data

Safaricom has announced a suite of new data products that will offer its subscribers the opportunity to access to faster data more conveniently.

The new suite of data will allow the rollover of the previous data bundles to the new bundles on the daily, weekly and monthly subscriptions. Consumer will now buy and use their daily bundles within 24 hours. Users will also be able to extend the validity of their unused data bundles by renewing them. However, the new validity period will only apply for those who make renewals before the earlier one expires.

Safaricom also announced that night shift bundles, will be scrapped today at night. This follows a number of complains received by the giant telecom from its customers through Social Media. The Night shift bundles were valid from 10pm to 6am and most of the subscribers found that to be limiting and they were not able to utilise all their bundles based on the existing conditions.

“At Safaricom, we are keen to democratize data so that the subscriber can reap the digital dividends that access to the internet can provide. We listened to our subscribers and made the necessary changes to the customer journey to allow them to continue to enjoy the unparalleled data experience that only Safaricom can provide,” said Sylvia Mulinge, Director, Consumer Business, Safaricom.

The new proposition will leverage Safaricom’s sustained investments in data infrastructure to provide a simplified purchasing experience for data users on the network.

Safaricom has invested over Kshs 30 billion over the last financial year to boost its data offering, including delivering an advanced 4G product to the market as well as rolling out over 2,010 kilometre of fibre in major cities across Kenya.

Data customers will now be able to select a new data plan that suits their needs from a menu of over 18 options starting with 5MB of data for just Kshs 5 to packages for 50GBs (the highest capacity data bundle ever seen in the market) for just under Kshs 7,000.

With over 12 million subscribers accessing the internet through its network, Safaricom pioneered its LTE Advanced (4G) proposition in December 2014, launching the most advanced version of the 4G system for mobile networks in Nairobi and Mombasa. Safaricom was the first operator in Kenya to roll out mobile data in 2003 on the 2G platform, and later the company was the first to launch its 3G platform in 2008.

In the last financial year, Safaricom reported active monthly mobile data customers rose to 21 per cent to register 11.6 million, forming 50 per cent of the MNO’s customer base and earning the company Kshs 14.8 billion in revenues.