Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore on Monday promised to have the newly established expiry of Safaricom Internet Bundles . Through his twitter handle, Mr. Collymore said that he had directed his Safarifom team to look at the grievances expressed by Kenyans on Twitter. Mr. Collymore said: “Ok. I’ve heard you on the data bundle expiry issue and have asked the team to urgently look at some options.” According to Mr. Collymore, the data bundle reviews effected over the weekend were an attempt by Safaricom to review its data value to its subscribers. “We’re just trying to give better value,” he added.
This came after Safaricom subscribers took to social media to protest over the terms and conditions governing Safaricom’s new unlimited Internet data bundles. This follows introduction of a new data pricing structure at the weekend.
Users are rallying around two hashtag protests to express displeasure at the expiry of unused bundles as well as a rule limiting bundle sharing to 20MB a day.
“Any data bundle not consumed within its validity period will be deleted and won’t be available for use,” Safaricom’s rules for its new bundles say. They add: “It is not possible to extend expiry… by purchasing newer bundles.”
The new rules also limit transfers of data bundles between subscribers. “It will be possible to Sambaza internet, but only to a maximum of 10MB per transaction and limited to two transactions (20MB) in a day,” Safaricom says. “All other rules for Internet Sambaza will remain in place.”
In January, Safaricom lowered the cap on the number of times one SIM card can Sambaza data bundles in a month from 50 to 20.
The move was aimed at throttling a thriving black-market in online reselling of cheaper data bundles, popularly known as “bundles mwitu”.
