Safaricom has terminated two of its post-paid calling tariffs, but retained current subscribers of the monthly billing service for one more year. The telco cited losses in the Karibu post-paid tariff which had gained popularity in the past few months.
Current individual subscribers will continue enjoying the service until May 26 2015 after which they will have the option of migrating to other tariffs.
“We would like to notify our customers that the Karibu PostPay bundles (1,000 and 2,500) have been discontinued and shall not be available to new customers,†read a notice from Safaricom in the dailies.
The Karibu post-paid tariff has two price plans. For Sh1,000 per month, subscribers get 900 minutes talk time for on-net calls, 100 minutes for off-net calls, 100 megabytes of data and 100 on-net SMSes.
For the Sh2,500 per month package, subscribers get 2,200 minutes for Safaricom- to – Safaricom calls, 300 minutes to rival networks, 250 megabytes of data and 250 on-net text messages.
The low revenues from the tariff were attributable to the fact that subscribers on Karibu post-paid bundles pay less than one shilling per minute to make calls compared to Safaricom customers on pre-paid plans who are charged Sh4 per minute for calls made during peak hours (8am and 10pm).
Safaricom has, however, maintained other post-paid tariffs such as New Advantage, community phone and those for corporate clients. These tariffs go for as little as Kshs. 3,000 per month.