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KEMIBARO: Faiba, Zuku battle for customers intensifies [Business Daily (Kenya)](Business Daily (Kenya) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) I recently had the opportunity to have two fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet connections. These are the Zuku 8Mbps Internet, which I have had for more than two years (and has subsequently been upgraded to 10Mbps for new customers) and a Jamii Telecom (JTL) Faiba 5Mbps, which I have had for just about a month. The Zuku service costs about Sh4,000 a month and includes cable TV and a phone line (ala triple play) whereas the Faiba service costs Sh5,000 for Internet service only. On the surface of it, it would appear that Zuku has the better deal since you get faster (?) bandwidth as well as cable TV and phone services for Sh1,000 less than Faiba. Now, I must confess that the only reason that I did get Faiba to begin with is that the Zuku service had been really horrible for weeks on end and I kept finding myself having to resort to Safaricom 3G which only happens to work on my balcony at home — not convenient, ideal or cost-effective. I needed to try out Faiba after many professed it was much better than Zuku. For someone who works mostly at home I simply needed a better 'always on' and uncapped Internet connection I could actually rely on. So, I bit the bullet and signed up, somewhat painfully so, for the Faiba service. One huge upside of having both Zuku and Faiba Internet connections at home active at the same time is I was able to more or less objectively compare the two side by side for a couple of weeks. The truth be said, having been on Zuku for more than two years I had experienced everything from hyperspeed bandwidth (no kidding!) all the way down to a slow, erratic and unreliable service. The caveat all along had been the (perceived?) pain and inconvenience of trying alternatives in the market such as the said Faiba, which as far as I know is the only other FTTH service available in my area (no thanks WIMAX!). In doing my comparisons, Zuku generally worked as well as Faiba on most occasions, or so I thought. Indeed there was an incident where Zuku was up and Faiba was down for almost a whole day which confirms that the Internet can be something of a lottery in Kenya irrespective of which ISP you use? I tried downloads as well as uploads and it was somewhat difficult to determine which service was actually better than the other. So, to make the testing conclusive, I ran speed tests on various occasions and this what I got (the results are illustrated above). Faiba was able to achieve consistently faster speeds than Zuku even though the 5Mbps service from Faiba is actually supposed to be slower than Zuku's 8Mbps service. Secondly, the Faiba service was only marginally "off' what it should have been (as advertised?) whereas Zuku was working at less than 50 per cent of the bandwidth it was meant to deliver. Ultimately, in terms of value for money, it would appear that Faiba is the better proposition, not to mention I have found it to be much more reliable (to-date?) than Zuku. Mr Kemibaro is an IT expert. (c) 2014 Nation Media Group. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |