If you blink, when it comes to Safaricom, you may actually miss it! Safaricom is Kenya’s largest business and telco in terms of revenues and market valuation, often, as a result of extreme execution when it comes to innovative business practices. Disruption more than anything seems to be their mainstay and standing still is clearly not an option even when they are so far ahead of the competition in a myriad of focus areas.

One area where Safaricom was clearly late to the party was the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) home internet space which they launched somewhat quietly around 2014. Their initial strategy was one of flanking established market leaders like Zuku and JTL’s Faiba by launching in residential areas in Nairobi that at the time would not have been seen as the usual suspects. This clearly worked since doing unconventional things is one of the reasons why Safaricom seems to always succeed.

Safaricom Home Fibre Is Leading The Home Internet Market In Kenya.

Since 2014, Safaricom is now the market leader in Kenya for FTTH with a presence in Nairobi, Mombasa, Western, Nyanza, Eastern, Central and Rift Valley covering 12,000+ residential estates and 350,000+ homes connected as of this writing. These are massive numbers whichever way you look at them in a relatively short period of time with the growth in uptake seemingly accelerating. As expected, in the past year or so of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya and globally, this has been a major factor behind the massive surge forward in consumer uptake.

According to the latest sector statistics recently released by the Communications Authority for the period October to December 2021, Safaricom had 243,623 fixed data subscribers which translated to 35.6% market share. This means that between December 2020 and approximately 4 months later Safaricom has added 100,000 more fixed data subscribers across FTTH and fiber-to-the-business (FTTB) offerings. Business is looking pretty good!

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, as expected, Internet services have become remarkably utilitarian for most Kenyans as we worked, schooled, played, socialized, and prayed from home. As a result, having always-on internet has become an essential lifestyle enabler. This was not lost on Safaricom as they doubled Internet speeds across all their Home Internet offerings at no additional cost.

The Revised Packages for Safaricom’s Home Fibre Internet Service.

Safaricom has taken yet another step forward to enhance the value propositions for some of their Home Internet offerings as follows:

If you look at the various Safaricom Home Fibre Internet packages, the least expensive option at being the bronze package for Kes. 2,900.00 has seen a drop in speed from 10 Mbps to 8 Mbps. The silver package remains unchanged in terms of the speed being 20 Mbps for Kes. 3,999.00 per month which is still exceptional value for money when compared with competitors’ offerings.

Things get interesting when you look at the gold and diamond packages. The gold package which is 40 Mbps gets Secure Net at no additional cost for Kes. 5,999.00 per month. Secure Net offers protection against security threats such as viruses and control what is accessed on Safaricom’s Home internet service. Subscribers do not need to download or install anything to use the Secure Net.

The biggest value addition is with the diamond package which gets a speed bump from 80 Mbps to 100 Mbps as well as Secure Net at the same previous monthly rate of Kes. 11,999.00 per month. Naturally, at this price, users of the diamond package would need very high speeds for various reasons given the monthly investment required so this won’t be for everyone.

Looking at all 4 packages, the silver package seems to have the best balance in terms of Internet speed as well as the monthly rate which compares favorably to many of Safaricom’s competitors for similar offerings. This means that provided that Safaricom is available where your home is located, it’s worth considering.

How To Get Signed Up On Safaricom Home Fibre

You can check to see if your area has coverage with Safaricom Home by going to www.safaricom.co.ke/home/ or by dialing *400# on a Safaricom line and selecting “Get Home Fibre” and follow the steps. If you’re in a fiber-covered area, you will get a call back from Safaricom within 24 hours. Assuming you are in area covered by Safaricom Home, you can also get a sense of which package would be ideal for your needs by going to https://www.safaricom.co.ke/home/home-fibre.php and selecting the “The Speed you need” option. The following illustration shows exactly how this works when you dial *400#:

A redeemable fee of Kes. 3,000 applies for all new Safaricom Home Fibre connections. To redeem the Kes. 3,000 fee, customers are required to renew their Home Fibre package for 6 consecutive months after being connected. Kes. 1,500 is automatically loaded to Safaricom Home Fibre accounts after the 3rd consecutive renewal and the remaining Kes. 1,500 is loaded upon the 6th consecutive renewal. For example, for the Silver package, customers pay Ksh. 2,499 to renew service in the 4th and 7th months. However, customers forfeit any unredeemed amount if they do not renew in any month during the first 6 months period. 

When it comes to paying for your Safaricom Home Internet connection, like all things good in life here in Kenya, and as expected, M-Pesa has you covered. Simply dial *400# and select “Pay” and follow the steps. Use M-PESA PAYBILL no.150501 and key in your Safaricom Home Fibre account number in the ‘account number’ section.

Safaricom’s Fair Usage Policy (FUP)

In March 2021, Safaricom announced their new fair usage policy (FUP) for their Home Fibre Internet offerings which was meant to curb the illegal reselling of their services by unscrupulous customers. This was met with a major backlash from their customers who saw this as a slight from Safaricom since their unlimited Internet access would be constrained on this basis.

However, as I wrote about it the time here on this blog, FUPs exist across all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and all Safaricom did was clearly communicate theirs in a way that was transparent, and logical. Safaricom Home Fibre is a shared connection with a contention ratio of 1 to 4 so this means prudent use of the service is essential on this basis as typically four users can share the same connection. As things stand, Safaricom’s FUP remains as unchanged as follows: