Safaricom Data Usage: This opinion feature was authored by Ephraim Njega. Mr. Njega regularly gives opinion on economic and business matters on his social media platform.

The other day Safaricom announced an interim dividend. A first in its history. What came to my mind is that the government is beginning to interfere in the affairs of the firm as we had feared when it interfered in the recruitment of the CEO. Let us shelf that for future debate.

Safaricom is becoming the most dangerous impediment to the Kenyan economy. There is no one who today doesn’t understand the critical role played in the economy by the internet.

When they released BBI constitutional amendment bill I quickly checked it to see if they had made the internet a human right. Of course they didn’t because one day they might need to ban the internet for petty politics.

When it comes to the internet Safaricom has become almost a monopoly. The other providers are either non existent in most places and their internet terribly unreliable.

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Safaricom’s internet maybe fast, reliable and widely accessible but it is exorbitantly priced. Its pricing is predatory and extortionist. Who came up with their current data bundles pricing system that doesn’t give quantity discounts for heavy users?

It took a Kenyan to go to court for them to allow non expiring data bundles. This is something we had been asking for over the years.

Now Safaricom has shocked the market by coming up with Fair Usage Policy that will throttle your fibre internet to unusable speeds if they think you are overusing it. Isn’t fixed internet supposed to be totally unlimited?

It is said that they are doing this because some people are reselling the internet for instance in cyber cafes and apartments. Why can’t they just work on their capacity in places where usage is heavy? Besides if a single connection is shared among many users don’t the speeds automatically reduce?

This is where the regulator and government needs to step in to encourage competition and to reduce this dominance since it is clearly being abused. Unfortunately the government being one of the largest shareholders in Safaricom is deeply compromised.

The government fails to see the big picture. A fast, affordable, reliable and accessible internet will spur the economy. This will deliver more in tax revenues. But this small minded government only thinks about the little dividends it is getting from Safaricom.

What Safaricom needs to know is that it is not too big to fail. In Kenya’s corporate scene it is still a toddler. The likes of Nakumatt came and went.

Soon an internet access technology will emerge that will render Safaricom irrelevant. Kenyans will never forget how Safaricom treated them when they had no options. If Safaricom thinks this is a joke let them find out what happened to former banking giants Barclays and Standard Chartered Bank in Kenya.