Safaricom Kairbu Tariff has not been scrapped after all. Last year, Safaricom announced that it had discontinued the Karibu Tariff and consequently stopped registering new subscribers. The main reason for the discontinuation was that the tariff was a loss making product. In January this year, Safaricom hinted that the tariff will continue but under new terms and conditions where either the pricing will be increased or size of service bundles decreased. This occurred just as Orange Introduced Post-Paid Offer to Take Advantage of Safaricomās Dithering.
On Thursday last week Safaricom sent SMS to Karibu Tariff subscribers informing them that their Tariff is here to stay but the accumulated SMSes, airtime and data bundles will expire by 1st May 2015, an announcement that outraged the customers who later took to social media to lash on Safaricom with harsh words (see Safaricomās Karibu Tariff changes receives backlash from #KOT), then later Safaricom rescinded the decision and posted the message below.
The Karibu Tariff is therefore being continued under new terms and conditions. What are these new terms and conditions and are they favorable compared to terms and conditions of Airtel Unliminet? In the subsequent paragraphs we compare Safaricom Karibu Tariff vs Airtel Unliminet.
You may ask why I am not doing a comparison between Safaricom Karibu Tariff and Orange PostPay Ongea Plan. It is because Orange Ongea Plan does not give bundled product offers (e.g. a given quantity of data or minutes on a postpay bundle), but rather, Orange Ongea Plan charges two shillings per minute for voice, 50 cents per SMS, andĀ three shillings per MB. Those rates are just way too expensive compared to Safaricom’s Karibu Tariff. On the flip side, you may say that Unliminet is prepay so shouldn’t be compared with Karibu Tariff. Yes, but they have exactly similar offers – the difference is in the time of making the payment – after product consumption for Karibu Tariff and before product consumption for Unliminet.
New Safaricom Karibu Tariff
The terms and conditions for use are as follows:
- The Bundles are valid for one (1) month equivalent to 30 days.
- All unutilised resources will expire after 30 days and be unavailable for use. The resources cannot be rolled over.
- These resources cannot be transferred (sambaza)
- The prevailing published PostPay charges are applicable for all international calls and messaging
- On full utilisation of the bundle resources before 30 days, subscribers can top up using airtime under the published
- Safaricom tariffs and terms on data, voice, SMS and Bonga
- All bills must be settled to facilitate issuance of resources. Only accounts that are fully settled will be credited with resources. Resources will not be allocated to subscribers who fail to settle their bills
- Safaricom reserves the right to change,vary,modify or withdraw these Price Plans at any time. In any of these events, notice will be given via media advertisements (including atSafaricomās discretion on the Safaricom website www.safaricom.co.ke) and will be effective immediately or as at the date referred in such notifications.
Resources for lines that are disconnected for lack of payment will be purged and will not be available upon reconnection
Airtel Monthly Unliminet
Terms and Conditions
- You buy bundled services (prepaid)
- You consume service bundles within the month, but if unable to consume resources, you can roll them over to the next month by renewing the service before expiry date.
- Other details can be known by contacting Airtel customer care as they haven’t uploaded the entire terms and conditions online.
A Shs 1000 bundle package is available for both Safaricom Karibu Tariff and Airtel monthly offer, andĀ these are what we gonna delve in.
Voice – Shs 1000 Karibu Tariff provides 900 minutes to be used within the network and another 100 minutes to be used off-net, whereas purchasing Shs 1000 Airtel Unliminet provides 400 minutes for all local networks. Let me assign Shs 1 per minute for comparison purposes. You’ll see why below. Thus, for Shs 1000, one can access Shs 1000 worth of talk time on Karibu Tariff but only access Shs 400 worth of talk time on Airtel Unliminet.
SMS – Shs 1000 Karibu tariff also gives 100 SMS for all local networks. At the rate of Shs 1 per SMS, we may value the SMSes as worth Shs 100. Airtel Unliminet on the other hand provides 2000 SMSes to all networks and at Shs 1 per SMS, this comes to Shs 2000 worth of SMSes.
Data – Finally Karibu Tariff allows you to access 100 MB of data and typically for data below 1GB, the pricing is normally at the rate of 1 bob per MB, hence Karibu Tariff offers you Shs 100 worth of data. Airtel Unliminet on the other hand provides 2000 MB of data and since 2 GB can be bought for Shs 1000, I calculated that Airtel Unliminet allows one to use data worth Shs 1000. I know that this calculation is unfair for Airtel Unliminet but it will be clear later.
Total – The value of Karibu Tariff totals to Shs 1200 (Shs 1000 talk time, Shs 100 SMS and Shs 100 data) whereas the value of Airtel Unliminet totals to Shs 3400 (Shs 400 talk time, Shs 2000 SMS and Shs 1000 data). What this means is that when you opt for Karibu Tariff, Shs 1000 will allow you to access services that can be valued at Shs 1200 (Shs 200 savings) whereas the person who opts for Airtel Unliminet will have bought services valued at Shs 3400 for Shs 1000 (Shs 2400 savings).
The other way to look at the above is that one can opt for Karibu Tariff and buy 1000 minutes (900 available for on-net and 100 available for off-net) at Shs 1000 but get a bonus of 100 SMMes and 100 MB of data. On the other hand, one could buy 2 GB of data on Airtel Unliminet for Shs 1000 but get a bonus of 400 minutes (without on-net/off-net division) and 2000 SMSes.
It is clear that if your main consumption is voice , you ought to register for the Safaricom Karibu Tariff and buy the minutes to get SMS and data bonuses. On the other hand, if your consumption is mainly data, you ought to buy the Airtel Unliminet and get the airtime and SMS bonuses. For the person who consumes both, their are two options; 1. register for Karibu Tariff for voice and Airtel Unliminet for data 2. Register for the Shs 2000 Airtel Unliminet bundle and get 6 GB data, 1200 minutes and 10,000 SMSes. I would go for option 2.
Of course it is clear that Airtel Unliminet is at least 10 times better than Safaricom Karibu Tariff as calculated by saving rate alone.
of course the better option is Airtel. duh!
DeKenyan Is it possible to convince Airtel to enhance their data connections.. Either too slow or doesn’t work… Safaricom expe but works
@hnjagiĀ DeKenyanĀ Airtel works for me extremely well. Speeds normally surpass 10 Mbps and
always available. Safaricom on the other hand gives me only 2G
connection. It all depends on where you stay.
kachwanya Problem is Airtel internet in some areas I know,and their customer care att is ‘You are on your town’s till we fix whatever….
kachwanya airtel is the best let safaricom be by the time they wakeup it will be late
kachwanya :Thatz just a promotion…whats the browsing speed
EkKaviti Internet experience depends on your location. Airtel is better in some places but Safaricom has a wider coverage