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.