Subscribers on Yu should now look to enjoying better data speeds on the network. This is according to Yu's product director Raja Sarkar. Sarkar says that the problems that have been experienced in the pas t have been due to legacy Ericsson telecommunication equipment. The telco's equipment is currently supplied by ZTE but some of their sites had been on the previous equipment until recently. Sarkar says that subscribers who are still experiencing problems should contact Yu to have this fixed. “We had reports of problems around Moi University areas and we have extended the bundle period for the affected subscribers in the Eldoret area,” said Sarkar.

On recent issues where subscribers had complained when Yu raised their data rates from Kshs 3 (US$0.037) per Megabyte (Mb) to kshs 10 (US$0.12), Sarkar said that the operator had been trialling a billing cycle of per kilobyte compared to the current per megabyte cycle. This was after receiving feedback from some subscribers who said they wanted to be billed per kilobyte. However, Yu soon restored their charges to US$0.037 per megabyte after complaints from several of their subscribers.
On the issue of promotional SMS on the network, subscribers who did not want to receive two messages per day could call customer care and have the service disabled. Yu was also working on automated functionality that one could use to manage their subscription. Sarkar said that Yu sends out promotional SMS to inform subscribers of new products and promotions since the company's business model doesn't rely on much advertising. This is aimed at keeping operational costs low which are then passed off to the subscribers. Yu would soon be rolling out subsidised SMS which would reduce the SMS length to 140 characters and place an advert in place of the remaining characters. This service would allow subscribers to send out SMS at a lower cost.
Sarkar said that Yu did not feel threatened by Orange's recent move that saw it enter into a deal with the biggest airtime distributor in the country, Mobicom. Sarkar said that Yu's strategy was that of strengthening retailers and that the company would continue to explore and establish strong links with retailers.
He also said that Yu-Cash, Yu's mobile cash transfer product was a revolutionary product compared with what the competitors offered. He referred to Yu-Cash as “internet banking product” that did not actually require an internet connection to work. Sarkar revealed that any mobile subscriber on any network can use Yu-Cash without being a Yu subscriber and that the product supported all SIM without need for a replacement. Other features was that Yu-Cash works with USSD, SMS and voice and with a little tweaking can be configured to perform internet and electronic commerce.
Sarkar revealed that over 90 per cent of Kenyan subscribers were only concerned with talk on their mobile phones with the remaining percentage using both data and voice on the phone.  He said that Yu would remain committed at keeping the costs low. Data speeds would remain acceptable. However, he did not reveal any immediate plans to roll out 3G on the network.
Sarkar was the only representative from the mobile telecommunication industry during the recently concluded Kenya Kenya Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2010.

Additional Remarks

After talking to Sarkar, I tried out the network in tow locations, in, outside the Nairobi CBD. At the Intercontinental Hotel area, Yu did speeds of 2 Kilobits per second(16 kilobytes per second) but at times was able to go up to 8 kilobits per second(64 kilobytes per second). Near General Motors on Mombasa Road, Yu averaged 2 kilobits per second maximum and could not load pages. Speeds of 8 Kilobits per second at the CBD saw loading of the pages in several seconds while the 2 KiB/s(kilobits per second) speeds promised to load the pages if my patience lasted for more than five minutes.

Zain, in comparison, had speeds of 8 - 20 KiB/s (64 - 160 kilobytes per second) in both locations which saw pages load in a couple of minutes.

Safaricom, on its website states that one can acheive speeds of up to 40 kilobytes per second on GPRS(General Packet Radio Service) and of upto 236 kilobytes per second on EDGE (Enhanced Data Rate for Global Evolution).

What is your experience on data services?