I never had passion in texting, but I have grown font of the service you’d say I am a big fan. Almost every mobile operator in the country has had or still has unlimited text messaging as one of the core services they provide, most Kenyans love the service and I am one proud user at least until now. Unlimited text messaging essentially means sending unrestricted number of text messages at a fixed fee, Safaricom used to offer this service for only Kshs.10, now it’s capped at only 200 messages for the same amount and 500 for Kshs.20, you’d wonder why a sudden change of tune. I have no second thoughts that Safaricom has done a great deal in championing innovation in the sector, they’ve pioneered most of the popular services we now can’t live without, but at the same time, I’ve had a feeling we get some of these services guinea pig style you’d say, their priority is on revenue generation, and not just that but how much they get from these services.
500 text messages is a good number especially for average users, you’d have a major event that’s super urgent and more invites to make to fully exhaust that figure. On a normal use, you’ll hardly send more text messages and frankly, sometimes I wonder whether ‘unlimited’ was just a marketing strategy. Small business owners who’ve used the unlimited text messages service are big losers here; at least for those who consider Safaricom their preferred provider. Take an example, a boutique shop with a well kept customer database; let’s say a thousand, of the a thousand customers, more than a half of them have requested a special kind of perfume that’s current not available locally, with the unlimited text messaging service, you’d easily forward short texts to all of them in case the perfume becomes available for only Kshs.20. There are however some important instances to note here, we’re assuming all of them have working Safaricom sim cards and you have a pretty good bulk messaging app or a handset that can easily achieve the same.
Basically, it means we’ll be paying Kshs.0.04 for the first 500 text messages we sent from Safaricom to Safaricom and normal rates applied for any extra sms or to other networks. 500 is still a good number considering the service is available on a daily basis, however, I love ‘unlimited’ we’d argue on and on about the same but that’s just me. To access Safaricom’s text messaging packages, you’d need to dial *188#, it’s their USSD code where you’ll get to select from three options; 1: to get 20 sms daily at 5/-, 2: to get 200 sms daily at 10/-, 3: to get 500 sms daily at 20/- or unsubscribe if you’re already hooked to either
good morning