Daily Trends

Nearly one in every four Safaricom customers believes the telecommunications giant is shortchanging them on data and text message charges, a damning regulatory survey has revealed, exposing a crisis of trust at Kenya’s dominant mobile operator just as mobile data becomes its biggest money spinner.

The explosive findings from the Communications Authority of Kenya paint a troubling picture of widespread consumer suspicion, with only 77 per cent of Safaricom’s massive customer base trusting their data bills and 77.7 per cent believing they are accurately charged for SMS services. This means a staggering 23 per cent of subscribers, millions of Kenyans, harbour deep doubts about whether they are getting what they pay for.

The timing could not be worse for Safaricom. The company just recorded a historic milestone in its half-year results to September 2025, with mobile data revenue surging 18 per cent to Sh44.4 billion, overtaking voice revenue for the first time in the telco’s history. Voice, once the backbone of telecommunications, managed only a paltry 0.5 per cent growth to Sh41.09 billion, highlighting how critical data has become to the company’s bottom line.

But as Safaricom celebrates this financial triumph, the regulatory survey commissioned by the Communications Authority and conducted by Strategic Synergy Consultants between July 2024 and June 2025 exposes an uncomfortable truth: customers do not trust how they are being billed for the very services now driving the company’s profits.

“Safaricom shows lower performance compared to other providers. While still a majority, these lower figures indicate that Safaricom customers are less confident in billing accuracy, particularly for data services,” the report states with clinical precision.

The contrast with competitors is stark and humiliating. Jamii Telecommunications, a relative minnow in the market, enjoys the highest trust ratings, with 98.4 percent of customers confident in their data billing and 88.6 percent trusting SMS charges. Airtel Kenya follows closely with 98.3 percent and 86.2 percent respectively. Even Telkom Kenya, long struggling for market relevance, outperforms Safaricom on billing credibility.

The mistrust extends beyond data and texts. Only 80.2 percent of Safaricom customers believe they are correctly charged for voice calls, the lowest rating among all operators. By comparison, a remarkable 97.6 percent of Airtel customers trust their call billing, followed by Jamii at 96.7 percent and Telkom at 94 percent.

The survey, which covered more than 4,200 respondents, lays bare a fundamental problem: transparency. A paltry 18 percent of Safaricom customers say they receive monthly billing information, compared with 44.1 percent of Airtel subscribers and 35 percent of Jamii customers. Without regular, detailed billing statements, customers are left guessing whether the charges deducted from their accounts match the services consumed.

This opacity becomes especially problematic in an era when data consumption is exploding. Increased online learning, remote working and entertainment streaming have made data services indispensable, transforming mobile internet from a luxury into a necessity. Kenyans are using more data than ever before, making billing accuracy not just a consumer rights issue but a question of economic justice.

The survey notes that billing disputes consistently rank among the most common complaints lodged by subscribers with the Communications Authority, according to quarterly regulatory reports. This suggests the problem is not merely perception but reflects real, ongoing frustrations with how charges are calculated and applied.

Safaricom’s dominance in the market makes the trust deficit even more significant. The company controls approximately 65 percent of Kenya’s mobile subscriptions as of September last year, dwarfing Airtel’s 30.7 percent market share. Telkom and Jamii each hold about one percent. With such overwhelming market power, Safaricom effectively holds millions of Kenyans captive, unable to easily switch to competitors even when dissatisfied.

The billing trust crisis comes on the heels of other controversies that have dented Safaricom’s reputation. In late 2025, the company faced fierce public backlash after quietly slashing data allocations on its popular ‘No Expiry’ bundles by more than half, effectively doubling internet costs overnight. Customers who had been getting 255 megabytes of non-expiring data for Sh51 suddenly found themselves receiving only 102 megabytes for the same price.

Safaricom initially blamed the cuts on a technical issue, an explanation many customers found unconvincing given the changes persisted for over a week before the company restored original allocations under intense pressure. The incident reinforced suspicions that the telco was testing how much it could squeeze from customers before provoking rebellion.

Industry analysts note that billing transparency is fundamental to maintaining consumer trust in any service sector, but especially in telecommunications where complex tariff structures, data throttling and variable network quality create information asymmetries that favor providers over customers. When the dominant player in the market performs worst on transparency metrics, it raises questions about whether market power has bred complacency.

The Communications Authority report pointedly observes that improved billing transparency and clarity are key to sustaining consumer trust across all providers. For Safaricom, this is not merely a regulatory box-ticking exercise but an existential challenge as the company transitions from voice to data as its primary revenue engine.

The company’s response to these findings will be closely watched. Will Safaricom dismiss the survey results as statistical noise, or will it acknowledge that nearly a quarter of its customers, millions of Kenyans, feel they cannot trust the bills they receive? The answer will determine whether this trust deficit deepens into a full-blown crisis of confidence that competitors could exploit.

Rivals have already been circling, banking on lower call tariffs and aggressive data promotions to chip away at Safaricom’s dominance. Airtel has repeatedly positioned itself as the more customer-friendly alternative, offering better value data bundles and, according to this survey, significantly higher billing credibility. The trust gap revealed by the regulatory study hands ammunition to these competitors.

For ordinary Kenyans, the survey findings validate what many have long suspected: that the charges appearing on their mobile accounts do not always add up, that data bundles seem to deplete faster than usage would suggest, and that the dominant telco’s billing practices merit serious scrutiny.

As mobile data cements its position as Safaricom’s biggest revenue line, the company faces a moment of reckoning. Trust, once lost, is notoriously difficult to rebuild. With nearly a quarter of customers already doubting billing accuracy, Safaricom must act decisively to restore confidence or risk watching its hard-won market dominance slowly erode under the weight of consumer suspicion.

The Communications Authority has thrown down the gauntlet. The question now is whether Safaricom has the will to pick it up.