Safaricom Gives PostPay Tariff a Second Thought

Rather than cancel the tariff, Safaricom says it will either increase the cost of each bundle or decrease its size at the current rates to maintain its customers while ensuring profitability.

The new tariff will be made public in April and will take effect in May. The tariff has two price plans.

For Ksh. 1000 ($11) per month, a subscriber gets 900 minutes talk time for on-net calls, 100 minutes for off-net calls as well as 100 megabytes of data and 100 on-net SMSes.

For Ksh. 2500($27) a month, subscribers get 2,200 minutes for Safaricom to Safaricom calls, 300 minutes to rival networks, 250 megabytes of data and  250 on-net text messages.

Safaricom, the country’s leading operator, says these rates have been financially unsustainable since 2011 when the tariff was introduced, yet subscriptions were growing speedily.

According to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK), between March and June 2014, Safaricom’s post-paid clients grew by 10. 5 percent to 522,783 customers, according to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA).