@Sidney Ochieng and listers. This is a great conversation. I like Kivuva's argument on market forces. What we should possibly ask is this:-

1. Did Safaricom deliberately sought to hoodwink customers, hook them on cheap internet, and once they had penetrated the market changed the Terms of Service? And if so, are there other options in the market? 

2. It wasn't very long ago that this list was full of complaints about Zuku's service. That seems to have disappeared. Could it be because an alternative was offered in the form of Faiba by Jamii and Safaricom's Home Fibre? I understand that Liquid is also testing a home internet offering. The more the merrier. 

3. The regulator has been awfully silent as this debate rages on social media. Time for some direction?

Regards

 

Ali Hussein

Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 1:29 AM Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thanks Mwendwa for the resources. I'm going to push back on your point on using market share to define whether or not competition exists in this market obscures a lot. When it comes to fixed lines what matters is where the cable terminates near enough to you connect to. There are entire neighbourhoods that are only served by a single provider. So my question still stands about what the CA is doing to ensure more competition.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 21:47, Mwendwa Kivuva <Kivuva@transworldafrica.com> wrote:

Thanks Sidney for initiating this debate.

On Tue, 16 Feb 2021 at 19:44, Sidney Ochieng via kictanet <kictanet@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,
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 

--

Regards,

Sidney

Twitter: @princelySid | Web: sidneyochieng.co.ke Skype: sidney.ochieng | Github: princelySid

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