Expensive to Cheap: Why Many Kenyans will Switch from Safaricom to Starlink

American Billionaire Elon Mask has seen the opportunity to offer cheaper data plans to Kenyans with the launch of  Starlink, a telco company to offer Kenyan telecommunication giant Safaricom competition in the market.

Safaricom runs a monopoly in the Kenyan telecommunications industry and offers data plans that many Kenyans feel are unaffordable and with the allure of getting data from Starlink at half the price they get it for at Safaricom there is about to be a big migration.

Apparently Starlink will offer Kenyans 50GB a month at the price of Kshs 1,300 while Safaricom offers 25GB at Kshs 3,000 a month. Starlink subscribers will also get the offer of Kshs 20 for every 1GB if there subription is depleted before the month ends.

The disadvantage of Starlink is that subscribers will need to incur a cost of Kshs 45,500 to buy installation software. However, since this may be unaffordable to many Kenyans Starlink also offers a payment plan where Kenyans can pay around Kshs 1,950 a month while using the starlink services.

According to Communications Authority of Kenya Safaricom owns a lion share in the Telecommunication industry with a market share of 63%, with Airtel second at 31% while the rest is owned by other broadband providers.

Whether Starlink will make a dent in the Kenyan broadband and internet market is a question of time but my prediction is that they will give Safaricom a run for their money.