Umoja

Having slashed ADSL costs significantly in February 2006, Telkom Kenya has hiked their entry level ADSL pricing by 64% after only 5 months.

The service in question is the 32/128kbps pre-paid unlimited ADSL bundle. This was revolutionary when it came out and uptake was good. New users parted with the KSh3800 ($51) connection fee, the KSh8500 ($115) modem fee and then committed themselves to a KSh5604 ($76) monthly fee with a belief that, as per ADSL pricing across the rest of the known world, the price would either remain constant and the speeds increase, or the prices would come down over the course of the next 12 months or so. The really nice bit was the fact that access was via scratch cards that could be purchased as needed (no monthly bills). Though a bit fiddly for the first time user to set up each month, it provided flexibility to the consumer. It also gave users a neat way to sidestep Telkom’s notoriously erratic billing.

Seeing as I was on this tariff, I was mightily pissed off to pick up a letter in my post box today informing me of this (back dated a week, mind you). Not many people who parted with their KSh17904 ($242) first bill saw a 64% increase coming in as little as 5 months. The same service now costs an astonishing KSh9188 ($125) a month. That’s $25 more than the average monthly wage.

At the same time, Telkom have introduced a new tariff for “home users”. The speed is 32/128kbps. The cost is KSh5604 ($76). The difference is the introduction of a 90hr monthly access limit. So that’s three hours access a day (or 6 hours if you’re a night owl and use the service between 8pm and 8am at half price). This means that KSh5604 ($76) now buys you 87.5% less time than it used to. This hourly limit means that access on the tariff is now a fraction over the cost of using an internet cafe (average price of browsing in an Urban internet cafe is Ksh60 ($0.83) an hour).

After I’d calmed myself down a bit and stopped ranting at the injustice of it all, I contacted Telkom. First port of call, customer services (toll free), a gentleman told me he couldn’t tell me why the prices had increased. He did let me know that the marketing department should know and said they would call me back. They didn’t call. For my sins, I once worked in media sales, so I’m pretty good at getting through to who I need to on the phone. I called again. Several attempts were made to get rid of me, but I said I was happy to hold for marketing head office (ah, the benefits of calling toll free numbers). No one really wanted to talk to me and I was passed from pillar to post until I reached a lovely lady called Jane.

Jane was very nice. She was very understanding. She listened as I got a bit heated about the unfairness of the price increase and then agreed that it was unfair. And then she told me why the prices had been put up. It turns out just about every internet cafe owner within spitting distance of a digital exchange in Kenya has switched to 32/128kbps PAYG tariff. Businesses are supposed to use the 64/256kbps service which costs KSh16008 ($218) per month. By moving to the 32/128kbps tariff, they could slash their monthly overheads by as much as a half (competitor’s prices are either just as expensive, or require higher initial capital outlay and additional licensing for VSAT or radio equipment).

What really got me really thinking was Jane’s revelation that the original 32/128kbps service was not for business use. The fact that so many businesses switched over to it had caused Telkom to panic, hence the hefty price increase and introduction of a severely limited “home user” rate. I can see why they wanted to take action against businesses using an inappropriate tariff, what I don’t see is why those users at the very lowest level of entry, who have already invested a large amount of money to access a service, are being penalised so harshly. Surely there must be ways or ensuring that businesses (for which read multiple users/internet cafes in particular) are not able to use this tariff, but home users are?

It would seem I’m not the only person who has been complaining about this, but I’ve only found one other mention on the internet here:

swampcottage.blogspot.com (site only renders properly in IE)

Jane at Telkom informed me that staff were petitioning their managers to reconsider this unfair pricing and asked me to send an email outlining my complaint and any suggestions as to other ways to approach it. This is a rewrite of the email I’m sending to her. I’m pretty certain someone who reads this might have a solution to Telkom’s problem (businesses with multiple users using inappropriate tariffs) that means home users on the entry level tariff aren’t penalised so heavily.

The address to petition is (apparently);

telkomadsl@telkom.co.ke