Try to wrap your mind around this: Truly unlimited Internet in Uganda at blistering fast speeds of 6Mbps at a paltry fixed price of UGX 330,000 a month. In addition, the internet bundle has no data caps at all! This means the internet speeds won’t drastically reduce to a crawl after you pass a certain threshold. This is definitely a first in Uganda. Smile Communications has introduced this new offering they call Smile Premium Bundle and it has left us shell-shocked.
Previously unlimited internet bundles (Smile’s included) were not truly unlimited as advertised. What telcos normally do is they cap the unlimited internet bundles to a certain threshold. Let’s say 35 GB for Vodafone’s unlimited bundle, after which the download speeds are throttled to speeds of 128kbs from 2Mbps. Frankly, at this speed you might as well give up on using the internet altogether because it’s annoyingly slow.
Smile Uganda Unlimited Bundles
| Smile Unlimited Bundles | Price | Data cap | Speeds | Throttled speeds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily Smile Unlimited | UGX 12,000 | 1.5GB | 2Mbps | 256Kbps |
| Weekly Smile Unlimited | UGX 75,000 | 5GB | 2Mbps | 256Kbps |
| Monthly Smile Unlimited | UGX 179,000 | 25GB | 2Mbps | 512Kbps |
| Smile Premium Bundle Monthly | UGX 330,000 | Unlimited | 6Mbps | 6Mbps |
Solely basing on how telcos work in Uganda, we are somewhat skeptical of the Smile Premium Bundle. Its very likely they will change their offering along the way. I mean who doesn’t? Vodafone came on the scene offering great rates for their unlimited internet bundles. But along the way, the shine of the newcomer wore off and they slipped back to the usual rates offered by other service providers.
Nonetheless, we are hoping -fingers crossed- that Smile Communications makes this a permanent internet bundle offering. Doing so will start an unlimited internet price war in Uganda and it’s well understood that when giant’s fight, subscriber’s jubilate. On this point, Uganda’s two telecom giants, MTN and Airtel are conspicuously not offering unlimited data bundles for some reason. Will Smile’s Premium bundle force them to finally act? Let’s wait and see.
Smile has added new locations receiving superfast 4G LTE internet, now including: Kampala, Entebbe, Wakiso, Mukono, Mbarara, Masaka, Masindi, Fort Portal, Kabale, Gulu, Lira, Soroti, Mbale, Jinja and Tororo.