I wrote about Zuku Internet being incredibly cheap and someone at Zuku noticed, gave me a call, and asked me to try their Internet out so that I could decide to join their Internet from an informed position. The problem is, the Internet I tried is what they call Zuku Office, so I am yet to test their Residential Packages to really know how reliable they are. Good news is that I have a good friend using Zuku Internet and I will pop in in his place to test his Internet and write a review on the same but not now; I will do so as soon as I have made up my mind on whether to subscribe to both their Pay TV and Internet service or not. In the meantime I am still monitoring their customer care service.

For today let me talk about their Zuku Office package, the Zuku Internet offering for small and medium enterprises. Different from the Residential Packages, there are only two packages in Zuku Office and these are the 10 Mbps and 20 Mbps respectively. In their website they say the following about the two packages:

Higher upload/download speeds with up to 50 Mbps download and up to 10 Mbps upload speeds.

That's an error; so don't rely on the information they have put in their website. They gave me a brochure that has the following wordings for 10 Mbps:

Higher upload/download speeds with up to 10 Mbps download and up to 2.5 Mbps upload speeds.

That's more like it. Similarly, the wordings for their 20 Mbps in the brochure reads:

Higher Upload/download speeds with upto 20 Mbps download and up to 5 Mbps upload speeds

During my testing of the Internet, the speeds were damn fast and at no time did I experience any down time (they must have called me on the best day knowing that I would blog about it), and at one time I decided to test the speed. The download speed reached 9.9 Mbps while the upload speed averaged at 3.3 Mbps as shown in the screen shot below.

Zuku Internet - 1

 

So yes, I liked what I experienced and if the speeds I experienced is the same for the residential 10 Mbps package, then yes, I am in.

But, can we say of the Zuku Office as best, price wise, as I can confidently say of their Zuku Internet for residential places? I don't really know. This is because I don't know about the price offers by the firms except for Faiba Internet for Businesses which is available on their website. They have been advertising these ever since. Let me compare for you the offers by Faiba vs the offers by Zuku.

As already mentioned, Zuku Office comes with only two packages both of which are described by the following flowery words in their Zuku Fibre web page:

Designed to meet all the small & medium sized enterprises' communication needs

The Zuku office package caters for the business communication needs by providing a triple play service (internet, TV & telephony) under one roof but still allowing the business to buy only what they need.
In addition the solution provides for a managed Local Area network services via Managed wifi, optional TV package. It further makes it possible for a business to manage their server based services such as mail server services, CCTV camera services for their offices among others.

 

Key Benefits

  • A modular based service; you only buy & pay for what you need
  • Very competitive and affordable setup fees & monthly service charge
  • Quality upload/download speeds
  • Very competitive calling rates
  • Manage your server based services using the static IP
  • Enable office mobility via a fully managed wifi
  • Extend Digital TV to every room

On the other hand, Faiba Internet comes in five packages namely 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 Mbps respectively. Each of these have been explained independently as follows:

(Read in Kamba accent - Notice the prices in bold blue.)

Faiba 3 Mbps

This is a product designed for small offices with 1-10 users. It is ideal for;

  • Upto 3Mbps
  • Ksh 10,000/month
  • Small Offices
  • 1-10 Users or devices
  • Email
  • Light Web Browsing

Faiba 6 Mbps

This is a product designed for small offices with 11-20 users. It is ideal for;

  • Upto 6Mbps
  • Ksh 15,000/month
  • Small Offices
  • 11-20 Users or devices
  • Frequent Email
  • Moderate Web Browsing

Faiba 9 Mbps

This is a product designed for small offices with 21-30 users. It is ideal for;

  • Upto 9Mbps
  • Ksh 25,000/month
  • Medium Offices
  • 21-30 Users or devices
  • Frequent Email
  • Moderate Web Browsing
  • Light File Sharing

Faiba 12 Mbps

This is a product designed for a medium office with 31-40 users. It is ideal for;

  • Upto 12Mbps
  • Ksh 30,000/month
  • Medium Offices
  • 31-40 Users or devices
  • Heavy Web Browsing
  • Large File Transfer
  • Suitable for Cloud Connectivity
  • Video Conferencing ,Webcams
  • Online Based Businesses

And finally Faiba 15 Mbps

This is a product designed for a medium ofice with 41-50 users. It is ideal for;

  • Upto 15Mbps
  • Ksh 40,000/month
  • Medium Offices
  • 41-50 Users or devices
  • Heavy Web Browsing
  • Large File Transfer
  • Suitable for Cloud Connectivity
  • Video Conferencing ,Webcams
  • Online Based Businesses

Since Zuku only offers 10 Mbps and 20 Mbps, I will only compare the two against Faiba's 9 Mbps and 15 Mbps respectively. We start with Zuku's 10 Mbps against Faiba's 9 Mbps.

Faiba's 9 Mbps requires you to part with Shs 25,000 a month to be optimally used by 21-30 users. Since Zuku's 10 Mbps at test time clocked 9.9 Mbps download speed, I will assume speed wise the two speeds are basically equal. I will also assume that maybe Faiba's 9 Mbps performs better at upload speed.

Further, I assume that if Zuku's 10 Mbps is connected to 21-30 computers, then the same user experience is likely to be at par with Faiba's user experience. But Zuku's 10 Mbps requires you to part with Shs 7,000 a month. Faiba hasn't provided initial installation fees but to install Zuku's 10 Mbps in your office you will need to part with Shs 6,000. You also get two free cordless handsets offering free Zuku to Zuku calls.

Since the highest speed on Faiba offer is 15 Mbps, I will also assume that the experience in that package is almost similar to Zuku's 20 Mbps experience. This can be justified in the sense that Zuku's bandwidth will be shared by many people as Zuku as about 45,000 customers against Faiba's less than 3,000 customers. So for 15 Mbps Faiba wants you to part with Shs 40,000 a month. On the other hand, for a slightly better experience, Zuku wants you to part with Shs 10,000 a month.

Orange Kenya is currently asking you to do the math, and so we do it here. In any given month Zuku customer saves Shs 18,000 when using the 10 Mbps business bundle compared to the price Faiba's customer is paying for a similar speed. This means that in one year, Zuku's customer has saved Shs 216,000. The other way to look at it is that Faiba wants you to spend an extra 216,000 shillings each year to access a 9 Mbps Internet.

The story doesn't end there. If you are premium a customer, then you will need to spend an extra 30,000 shillings each month on Faiba's 15 Mbps against spending Shs 10,000 on Zuku's 20 Mbps. This figure translates to Shs 360,000 annually.

Then take a look at the prices in terms of moving from 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps on Zuku vs moving from 9 Mbps to 15 Mbps on Faiba. To move from 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps on Zuku, you shall have doubled you speed. Zuku however does not want you to double your monthly subscription fees but rather asks you to add only Shs 3,000 onto the Shs 7,000 monthly fees you would pay for 10 Mbps. This represents a 42.85 percent increase in budget for a 100 per cent increase in speed. However, to move from 9 Mbps to 15 Mbps on Faiba which represents a 66.67 percent increase in speed, you will need to increase your Internet budget by 60 percent - that is from Shs 25,000 to Shs 40,000.

So what's so good in Faiba? Assuming there is zero downtime on Faiba's Internet and excellent customer care against presumably 5% downtime on Zuku's Internet with poor customer care (5 per cent downtime is extremely high), I am not sure if spending an extra 257% for 9/10 Mbps speeds and 300% for 15/20 Mbps speeds is worth the slight reliability and customer care disadvantage you would experience on Zuku.

Zuku better overhaul its customer care once and for all and there will be no denial that it's the best Internet Service Provider in Kenya both for residential and business customers.