Safaricom’s All In One Bundles Are Comparable To What We Are Getting Locally

Safaricom’s All In One bundle offers subscribers an all-inclusive package that has data, minutes and SMS’s hence the name. On top of this Safaricom has recently begun giving 5GB monthly data for YouTube videos at no extra cost which is pretty cool.

The extra data is available on the cheaper KES1000 (US$9.90) & KES2000(US$19.80) All In One package.

How expensive is Safaricom data?

There’s been a lot of uproar on social media about Zimbabwean data being too expensive and out of the reach of many so I decided to compare what most Kenyans are paying for their data vs what we get to pay down here.

US$9.90 is not an insignificant amount and I thought it would be interesting to mention just how much data that can get you in Kenya (or from Safaricom specifically). The bundle is Yo-Mix like in that you get to choose what you prioritise and there are 3 packages you can choose with your US$9.90:

Talk More: 400 mins +1GB Data

Talk & Browse: 200 mins + 4GB Data

Mega Data: 5GB

I’m using the current exchange rates (black market not Interbank) thus US$9.90 is in the RTGS$48.51 range. If we compare the mega data bundle to the monthly offerings we have locally the outcome is pretty interesting :

Telecel’s Monthly 5GB Data bundle costs RTGS$75 (US$15), whilst Econet and NetOne don’t even have monthly bundles. Their closest competitors to this is a 3,1GB (Econet) and 2.5GB (NetOne) bundle that cost $100 (US$20) and $50 (US$10.2) respectively.

The differences are negligible and once you consider the fact Safaricom has close to 30 million subscribers you can see how they manage to undercut local mobile network operators just marginally. You can also see how before the recent changes in data prices we weren’t paying much to access the internet.

The South African Competition Commission came out and said that mobile data is too expensive in the country and thus a trend emerges. Maybe it’s not unique to Zimbabwe and mobile data is generally just expensive. If a mobile network with close to 30 million subscribers has comparable prices to 3 networks with less than half of the total subscribers, then maybe our mobile networks aren’t cartels trying to rip us off after all. I said maybe because I’m not too sure…

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