I came across an interesting Zuku promotional flyer while visiting a shopping mall in Nairobi.

At first, what caught my attention were the home internet packages being advertised:

• 20 Mbps at KES 1,999 per month
• 40 Mbps at KES 2,999 per month
• 80 Mbps at KES 3,999 per month

Installation and equipment were also being offered for free.

My immediate reaction was that Zuku had introduced another major round of price reductions in Kenya’s increasingly competitive fixed internet market.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how the market had entered its most disruptive period since Starlink arrived in Kenya. Safaricom, Airtel, Faiba, Savanna Fibre, Vilcom and several other providers were introducing faster speeds, lower prices and increasingly aggressive home internet propositions.

However, after looking more closely at the flyer, I realized that the most interesting development was not necessarily the headline monthly pricing.

It was the discounted prepaid bundles beneath it.

Zuku is offering customers the option to pay for three, six or twelve months in advance, with progressively larger savings for longer commitments.

That may appear to be a relatively simple promotion. In reality, it could tell us much more about how Zuku intends to stabilize its business, retain customers and potentially rebuild its position following AXIAN Telecom’s acquisition of Wananchi Group.

The prepaid bundles are the real story

The flyer’s prepaid pricing significantly reduces the effective monthly cost of each package.

A customer who prepays for twelve months of the 20 Mbps package saves almost KES 6,000 compared with paying monthly.

For the 80 Mbps package, the saving is almost KES 13,000 over the year.

That makes Zuku’s offering particularly attractive on a price-and-bandwidth basis wherever it is available.

Multi-month home fibre payments are not entirely new in Kenya. Safaricom already offers three-, six- and twelve-month bulk-payment options. What is notable about Zuku’s approach is how prominently the discounts are being marketed and how substantial some of them are.

This suggests Zuku is not only trying to win customers through faster speeds and lower effective prices.

It is also trying to persuade them to stay for longer.

From a price war to a retention war

The first phase of Kenya’s latest fixed internet disruption has largely been about bandwidth.

Which provider can offer the most Mbps at the lowest monthly price?

The next phase may increasingly be about customer retention.

For an internet service provider, connecting a new household is expensive. The company must absorb or subsidize the cost of installation, equipment, sales commissions, fibre provisioning, customer onboarding and support.

If the customer disconnects after a few months, recovering those costs becomes difficult.

A subscriber who prepays for twelve months changes those economics.

Zuku receives the cash upfront. Revenue becomes more predictable. The risk of voluntary churn declines. The company has more time to recover customer acquisition costs, and the customer is less likely to switch to a competitor at the end of each monthly billing cycle.

This is particularly important in Nairobi apartment blocks and residential estates where several fibre providers may serve the same building.

A customer paying month by month can move from Zuku to Safaricom, Faiba, Airtel, Savanna Fibre or another provider relatively easily.

A customer who has already paid for a year is far more likely to remain.

From Zuku’s perspective, therefore, the discount is not simply a sacrifice in revenue.

It is an investment in customer lifetime value, cash-flow visibility and retention.

A customer commitment — and a customer risk

The prepaid model is attractive, but it also transfers more risk to the consumer.

Paying for twelve months makes sense when the customer is confident that the provider will deliver a reliable service throughout that period.

Before making such a commitment, consumers should confirm several things:

• Whether the promotional package is available at their address
• Whether it is open to existing customers or only new subscribers
• What happens if they relocate
• Whether unused months can be refunded
• How prolonged outages are handled
• Which Fair Usage Policy applies
• Whether the advertised price is guaranteed throughout the prepaid period

These questions matter because the value of a discounted annual subscription can quickly disappear when the service is inconsistent.

This is especially relevant to Zuku because its biggest problem has never been pricing alone.

It has been trust.

Zuku has a brand reputation to repair

There was a time when Zuku was arguably Kenya’s default home internet provider.

It helped establish the consumer fibre and cable internet market in Nairobi and became one of the country’s most recognizable home intenet connectivity brands.

However, over the past decade, it steadily lost ground as competitors expanded their networks and customers increasingly complained about unreliable connections, recurring outages, slow fault resolution and frustrating support experiences.

Whether every negative perception was justified is almost beside the point.

Brand reputation is shaped by what customers experience and what they tell one another.

Once an internet provider becomes associated with unreliability, changing prices or increasing advertised speeds is not enough to repair the damage.

The company must consistently deliver a better experience for a prolonged period.

Internet customers remember outages far more vividly than they remember speed upgrades.

They remember the video meeting that dropped.

The online class that could not continue.

The streaming service that kept buffering.

The support call that went unanswered.

The technician who did not arrive when promised.

This is why I continue to argue that speed is not everything in Kenya’s fixed internet market.

Speed attracts attention.

Reliability earns loyalty.

Is this the AXIAN Telecom effect?

The timing of Zuku’s latest initiatives is important.

AXIAN Telecom’s Yas subsidiary acquired 99.63% of Wananchi Group, the business behind Zuku in November 2025, promising greater investment capacity and operational expertise.

More recently, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced financing for AXIAN’s capital expenditure in Kenya, including the modernization and expansion of the former Wananchi fibre network. 

This means the turnaround story is not based only on marketing.

There is real capital behind it.

Zuku urgently needs that turnaround.

Its share of Kenya’s fixed internet market has declined from approximately 46.8% in 2015 to 10.4% by March 2026, while Safaricom and Faiba have established commanding positions and challengers such as Poa, Ahadi, Vilcom, Savanna Fibre, Airtel and Starlink continue to intensify competition.

At the time, I asked whether AXIAN Telecom could revive Zuku.

The acquisition created a opportunity to stabilize the company, modernize its network, improve customer service and rebuild a brand that had lost significant market share.

The combination of higher speeds, more competitive pricing and discounted prepaid subscriptions may represent some of the first visible signs of that turnaround strategy.

A typical infrastructure turnaround does not begin with dramatic expansion everywhere at once.

It often starts with stabilizing the existing customer base, reducing churn, improving cash flow, increasing utilization of existing network capacity and fixing operational weaknesses.

Only then does the company accelerate expansion.

Viewed through that lens, Zuku’s moves make strategic sense.

The speed upgrades keep the company relevant.

The lower entry-level prices make it more competitive.

The prepaid discounts improve retention and cash-flow visibility.

The bigger question is whether the commercial changes are being matched by equally meaningful improvements to network reliability and customer support.

Kenya’s home internet providers are playing different games

Although fixed internet providers often appear to be selling broadly similar packages, their underlying strategies are increasingly different.

Safaricom is using scale, brand strength and its wider ecosystem. It can connect home fibre with mobile services, M-PESA, enterprise connectivity, digital applications and other products.

Faiba continues to compete through its fibre footprint, established infrastructure and a wide range of packages covering mainstream and high-demand households.

Airtel is extending its value-led challenger strategy into home connectivity through fibre and 5G fixed-wireless services. Its longer-term opportunity lies in combining mobile voice, data, Airtel Money and home internet within one customer relationship.

Savanna Fibre has attracted attention through highly aggressive price-per-megabit propositions, while Vilcom has demonstrated how smaller and more localised providers can grow by focusing on neighbourhoods and towns that larger operators may not serve as effectively.

Starlink remains particularly compelling in locations where fibre is unavailable or too difficult to deploy economically.

Zuku’s emerging position appears to combine competitive pricing with longer-term customer commitments.

That is a logical strategy for a former market leader trying to stabilise its subscriber base and regain momentum.

Speed is becoming the price of admission

A few years ago, an internet provider could differentiate itself largely by offering substantially faster speeds.

That advantage is becoming more difficult to sustain.

The market now contains multiple providers advertising 40 Mbps, 80 Mbps, 100 Mbps and even faster packages at increasingly affordable prices.

For many ordinary households, the difference between 80 Mbps and 100 Mbps may be less important than the quality and consistency of the service.

The real competitive questions are becoming:

• How often does the connection fail?
• How does it perform during busy evening hours?
• How quickly are faults resolved?
• Does the provider communicate during outages?
• Is the supplied Wi-Fi equipment good enough?
• Are the Fair Usage Policy terms clear?
• Is customer support accessible?
• Does installation happen when promised?

These factors will increasingly determine which providers grow sustainably and which ones attract customers through promotions only to lose them later.

The Kenyan fixed internet market may therefore be moving from a price and bandwidth war into a customer experience and retention war.

What Zuku must get right

For Zuku’s strategy to work, the company must make the commercial promise work in the actual service experience.

It must improve network reliability at the neighbourhood level because internet performance can vary significantly between estates, apartment blocks and coverage areas.

It must communicate more effectively during outages and provide realistic restoration timelines.

It should make its Fair Usage Policy, refund conditions, relocation rules and prepaid subscription terms easier for customers to understand before they commit for six or twelve months.

It must also take greater responsibility for the in-home Wi-Fi experience. Customers often blame the internet provider for problems caused by weak routers, poor placement, interference or inadequate coverage within larger homes.

Most importantly, Zuku must measure the right things.

New subscriptions matter, but so do customer retention, repeat faults, repair times, network availability, installation turnaround, complaint resolution and overall customer satisfaction.

A turnaround cannot be measured only by how many promotional flyers are distributed or how many customers sign up.

It must be measured by how many remain satisfied enough to renew.

Could competitors copy the model?

The growing visibility of discounted prepaid fibre plans could encourage more providers to compete through payment flexibility rather than monthly pricing alone.

We may see more annual subscriptions, loyalty discounts, renewal incentives and price guarantees.

At the same time, other providers may move in the opposite direction by offering weekly, daily or pay-as-you-go home connectivity for customers whose incomes are less predictable.

Kenya’s broadband market could eventually support a much wider variety of payment models:

• Monthly subscriptions for ordinary households.
• Annual plans for customers seeking discounts and certainty.
• Shorter prepaid options for consumers operating within the kadogo economy.
• Converged packages combining home internet, mobile data, voice and entertainment.

That would represent a significant evolution from the traditional one-price-per-month model.

Zuku’s real test begins after the customer pays

The flyer caught my attention because of the lower prices.

However, the deeper story is about a former market leader trying to become competitive again under new ownership.

Zuku’s discounted prepaid bundles are compelling. They lower the effective monthly cost for consumers while helping the company improve cash flow, reduce churn and retain subscribers for longer.

But the most important question is not whether Zuku can convince someone to pay for twelve months.

It is whether that customer will still be satisfied at the end of those twelve months.

That will depend on network reliability.

It will depend on customer support.

It will depend on transparency.

It will depend on whether AXIAN Telecom’s investment translates into fewer outages, faster repairs and a consistently better home internet experience.

Kenya’s fixed internet market no longer lacks speed, choice or increasingly affordable pricing.

What consumers need now is dependable execution.

If Zuku can finally deliver that, this flyer may eventually be remembered as an early sign of a genuine turnaround.

If it cannot, the discounts may simply lock dissatisfied customers into the service for longer.

Either way, Zuku’s competitors should pay attention.

The next phase of Kenya’s home internet market will not be won by the provider with the biggest number on its flyer.

It will be won by the provider that delivers the best experience behind it.