The Real Cost of "Cheap" Data: How Safaricom's B-Live Changes Are Hurting Small Buyers

Samuel Waititu posted a complaint on Safaricom's social feed on 10 August 2026. The one-hour bundle was gone. B-Live was unavailable. Safaricom replied the same day that it was sorry and had taken his feedback. It did not say whether the product had been withdrawn, restricted, or repriced .

The silence was the answer. Within days, Safaricom confirmed the new reality. Only one B-Live offering would remain: KES 25, available daily between 23:00 and 16:00 . The hours between 16:00 and 23:00, the exact window when a boda rider finishes a shift, a student opens a laptop, and a trader posts stock to WhatsApp Status, were no longer covered.

No price was raised. The shilling figure on the menu did not change. But the product that made data affordable for millions of Kenyans was quietly removed, and the effective cost of getting online for an afternoon rose by half.

What B-Live Was, and What It Became

B-Live was built for people who could not pre-commit KES 1,000 for a monthly bundle. It sold time instead of volume. KES 20 bought an hour. KES 50 bought three hours. KES 150 bought six . For a trader with KES 50 in M-Pesa and an uncertain day ahead, that was the only way to get online at all.

The new structure is different. The KES 20 hourly option is gone. What remains is KES 25 for one hour, plus ten voice minutes, available only outside the evening peak . The hourly price rose 25 per cent. The multi-hour blocks that let someone plan an afternoon online disappeared. The effective cost of that afternoon rose from KES 16.67 an hour to KES 25, an increase of 50 per cent .

And the seven hours between 16:00 and 23:00? No B-Live access at all.

Who This Hurts, and Why the Numbers Prove It

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics recorded 18.1 million people in informal employment in 2025, against 3.31 million in formal wage employment. That is 83.8 per cent of all jobs . These workers are paid when a fare is completed or a harvest sells. They do not have a salary date. They cannot pre-commit KES 1,000 for thirty days, no matter how good the per-gigabyte price looks on paper.

The Communications Authority estimates average data use at about 5GB a month per subscription. Safaricom's own audited figure is 4.92GB. But the average hides a split. Roughly half of Safaricom's mobile data subscribers use less than 1GB in a month . For that half, the hourly bundle was not a marginal product. It was the entire product. Safaricom's chief financial officer described these customers as a "large opportunity" .

Removing the product they rely on is not a pricing adjustment. It is removing the entry point.

The Other Side of the Same Campaign

In the same three weeks that B-Live was gutted, Safaricom launched Pata More. The KES 1,000 monthly bundle went from 10GB to 21.5GB. The implied cost per gigabyte fell from KES 100 to roughly KES 47 . The KES 20 daily bundle rose from 150MB to 250MB. The KES 99 bundle rose from 1GB to 1.5GB .

These are real improvements. For anyone who buys monthly, Safaricom is cheaper than it was before. But the campaign was not designed for the buyer who survives on KES 20 at a time. It was designed for the buyer who can pay KES 1,000 upfront. Safaricom protected its high-value customers while stripping value from its smallest ones.

Airtel made its own adjustments. Its KES 1,000 bundle now gives 25GB, still more than Safaricom's 21.5GB . But the gap has narrowed dramatically. Before these changes, Airtel's advantage at the monthly tier was enormous. The KES 1,500 Smarta bundle once gave 90GB. It now gives 32GB . Airtel did not cut prices to compete. It cut value while keeping the price the same, then watched Safaricom do the same to its small buyers.

What Safaricom Has Not Said

Safaricom has described the B-Live changes as a review of data bundles. A congestion rationale is plausible. On 1 August, the company announced 300 additional masts, which is what a congestion constraint would call for . But Safaricom has not made that argument publicly. It has not explained why the evening hours, the busiest and most valuable window, were the ones removed. It has not said whether the decision will be reversed.

The company's financial position does not make the case easier to accept. Safaricom's Kenyan EBITDA margin reached 56.8 per cent in the year to March 2026, while capital expenditure fell 18.4 per cent. The declared dividend rose 66.7 per cent to KES 80 billion. Data revenue of KES 83.4 billion overtook voice for the first time . A company with expanding margins and falling capital intensity is not forced to remove the cheapest way its poorest customers get online.

The Verdict

If you buy monthly: you are better off than you were last year. The KES 1,000 bundle gives more than double the data it did before. Stay with Safaricom if coverage matters. Switch to Airtel if you want 25GB instead of 21.5GB at the same price.

If you buy daily or hourly: you have been hit hardest. The B-Live product you relied on is gone. The replacement covers hours you do not need and excludes the hours you do. Your options are to buy volume-based daily bundles that cost more per megabyte, or to stretch to a weekly or monthly bundle you may not be able to afford.

The truth nobody says out loud: Safaricom did not raise the price of cheap data. It removed the definition of cheap data that millions of Kenyans depended on. The price tag stayed the same. The door closed anyway.

Quick Verdict Card

Value Score: 2 / 5 for small buyers — The monthly tier improved, but the removal of affordable hourly access is a direct cost to the Kenyans who can least absorb it.