Jamii Telecom has launched its most aggressive shake-up of the
internet market with a five-fold increase in speeds for home and
business customers without a change in pricing.
Jamii,
whose internet service is popularly known as Faiba, says in a notice to
its customers that it has increased bandwidth for its lowest home
internet offer six times to 30 megabits per second (Mbps) up from 5Mbps
even as it maintains the price at Sh5,000 per month.
Subscribers
to Jamii’s fastest band of 20Mbps that is currently priced at Sh20,000 a
month will now enjoy speeds of 125Mbps at the same cost.
Jamii
has also increased fibre internet speeds for business clients who will
now enjoy speeds of 15Mbps for a price of Sh10,000 per month for the
cheapest offer that has been set at 3Mbps.
Joshua
Chepkwony, the company’s chairman, said the increased speeds are meant
to improve customer experience and affirm Jamii’s position as a leader
in the fibre internet market.
“We are overhauling our
packages because we feel that Kenya is ripe for high-speed internet. We
are increasing the speeds and maintaining the prices as a way of
passing the benefits of our upgraded infrastructure capacity to
consumers,” he said adding that Jamii was just repositioning itself in
the market and reassuring customers of quality service.
Jamii fibre network has more than 110,000 home and business
buildings passes in major towns, including Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret,
Thika, Naivasha, Nyeri, Kitale, Kakamega, Busia, Bungoma, Meru, Embu,
Kisii, Kericho, Voi, Kisumu and Nakuru. Jamii’s new bandwidths are
meant to attract new consumers and lock in existing ones in the wake of
increased competition in the home internet with the entry of new
providers.
Safaricom
, through its
home internet business, and Surf Kenya by Internet Solution Kenya are
the latest entrants in this market that was previously dominated by
Jamii Telecom’s Faiba, Zuku, Telkom Kenya and Liquid Telecom.
Liquid
Telecom said it was exploring the possibility of increasing its
bandwidth to keep up with increasing demands for internet at home while
Surf Kenya said it was exploring untapped markets within Nairobi.
“Liquid
Telecom has connected 3,000 homes, but our current reach is 6,000
homes. We are working to increase bandwidth to grow our reach”, the
company’s chief commercial officer, Paul Statham, said. Demand for
higher broadband speeds has been rising, according to the Communications
Authority latest market report.
The
report indicates that there were 120,000 subscriptions for internet
speeds of more than 2Mbps in the first quarter of the year. Only 35,000
subscriptions were captured for below 2Mbps.
“As
witnessed during the quarter under review, broadband speeds of more than
2Mbps recorded the highest number of subscriptions while those greater
than or equal to 256Kbps recorded the least.”
The
uptake of on-demand video entertainment channels like America’s Netflix
and Showmax and iFlix and the growing number of people working from home
are some of the factors driving the uptake of home internet products.
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