This archive report was first published on 30 August 2019.
On August 30, 2019, Safaricom announced a new subscription plan, dubbed 'All In One monthly bundles', which allowed users to bundle together calls, texts, and data.
The plan, priced from Kshs 500 to Kshs 10,000, aimed to net more subscribers by offering add-on features. Initially, Safaricom dangled the All In One monthly bundles to subscribers of its Flex product as a replacement.
Later, to add more value to existing subscribers and entice new ones, Safaricom included free YouTube data, capped at 5GB, on top of the free WhatsApp it had been offering from the first day to all users upon exhaustion of their allocated data.
However, the free YouTube access became a hit with subscribers, prompting Safaricom to keep it permanently, albeit with a catch – the company has slashed the free YouTube data by over half to just 2GB.
According to Safaricom, 'We introduced Free YouTube as a promotional offer and as part of our continued innovation to meet our customer’s needs. Based on the great uptake from our customers and feedback received, Free YouTube will now be offered as a permanent feature of our monthly bundles at 2 GB per bundle.'
Interestingly, Airtel Kenya has just announced that it will be giving subscribers of its Amazing data bundles 5GB data to access YouTube for free, a move that may be seen as a response to Safaricom's strategy shift.
