[kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

[Adam Lane]

There's a webinar on this topic today for those interested
A Public Policy Discussion on #HomeFibre and #FairUsage Policies in Kenya.
🗓️ Thursday, 18th February 2021
🕜 12:00PM - 1:30PM
Sign up here:
🔗 https://t.co/LdD11UVy8q
#LawyersHub #AfricaLawTech #ISP https://t.co/a5w9SUiAl6

Speakers from CA, Safaricom, Liquid, KICTAnet,


From:Beryl Aidi via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
To:Adam Lane <adam.lane at huawei.com>
Cc:Beryl Aidi <bee.aidi at gmail.com>
Date:2021-02-18 05:57:28
Subject:Re: [kictanet] Safaricom changes to home fibre ToS

Thank you Sidney for this.
I don’t think Safaricom is being sincere in this fair usage limits. They promised that with Home Fibre one can stream, download or upload stuff without limits. All you do is pay your monthly subscription. Fair usage is a type of rationing that limits how much you can do when you had been promised that you can do whatever you want. To me this is going back on a promise. It’s reminiscent of the days of unlimited 3GB bundles on the dongle modem only for them to strike you with a fair usage notice. Are other networks doing the same? As the industry leader in the country, this is bound to influence other industry players to adopt the same standards and limits which is not good. Maybe it might be time to seek other options.

Regards
Beryl

Sent from my iPad

On 16 Feb 2021, at 9:47 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke<mailto:kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:
Listers,
Not sure if you've seen the stir online of changes to the ToS with Safaricom's home offering.
Safaricom is destroying Home Fibre with new ‘Fair Usage’ Limits: https://tech-ish.com/2021/02/14/safaricom-is-destroying-home-fibre-with-new-fair-usage-limits/

The response from the company has been disappointing in the extreme, misleading with statistics and suggesting that it's best customers are thieves<https://twitter.com/Safaricom_Care/status/1360876964651929600>,
never mind that working for home has lead to increased demand and use of their services.

That tweet certainly does not call resellers thieves. It calls them resellers.


All this is beside the point, at least for this forum, what I'm concerned about this that if we didn't have an eagle-eyed blogger looking out for this, it would have been completely missed until it was already in place.

So I have a few of questions:

  1.  Does the CA have any policies around ToS changes around services under their purview and how they are communicated to users?

CA has a consumer and public affairs department. Here is what they have to say about ToC ( CA/CPA/CEP/B/05/2014 ) https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Consumer-Rights-and-Responsibilities.pdf

Perhaps CA should update that information. It is 6 years old. But good information nevertheless.

  1.  Should companies that run what could be considered critical infrastructure be allowed to arbitrarily change their ToS to apply retroactively especially if it's to the detriment of their customers?

I hope lawyers here can help us with this.

  1.
  2.  If customers choose not to accept a change in ToS what redress do they have given that perhaps the provider is the only one available in their area.
  3.  Finally, given that we know this could all be avoided if there was more competition in the fibre market, what is the CA doing to make it so that we have more competition in that area? It's concerning that Safaricom seems to only option for home connections in several places

 Determined by the market and economic forces. Just the other day, Safaricom was not in the home fibre market. What they have provided are more options for consumers. Numbers are stubborn facts. Fixed data subscription is as follows: Data source CA, July -September 2020 period, page 19 https://ca.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-Statistics-Report-Q1-2020-2021.pdf
 Safaricom PLC 229,406 subscribers, 35.6% market share
Wananchi Group (Kenya) Ltd* 202,237 subscribers , 31.4 35.6% market share
 Jamii Telecommunications Ltd 127,914  subscribers , 19.8 Poa  % market share
 Internet Kenya Ltd 56,824  subscribers ,8.8% market share
 Mawingu Networks Ltd 11,087 subscribers, 1.7 % market share
 Internet Solutions Kenya Ltd 9,228  subscribers, 1.4 % market share

Consumers are speaking with their wallets.

As a policy discussion list, probably what we should be asking is what is the fair cost for certain broadband packages, and whether there is anything that can be really unlimited. Wearing my competent network engineer hat, I can tell you even at Safaricom, they don't have unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited resource to the extent of the network devices, network media, and cost of acquiring and delivering that bandwidth to your edge device.

Best Regards
______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwendwa-kivuva
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