Sad news for Safaricom textaholics as the mobile service provider scrapes off its unlimited SMS bundle plan. Safaricom subscribers will instead get 200 SMSes for KES 10 per day as opposed to the previous plan where one got unlimited SMSes, all day, for KES 10.

These 200 SMS will only be applicable for Safaricom to Safaricom SMSes and once one exhaust them before expiry of the bundle period, which currently stands at 24 hours from the time of purchase, subscribers will be charged an out-of-bundle rate of KES 1 per SMS.

Let’s see how much one will be paying for each SMS the send under this plan:

10/200 = KES 0.10

Under the 200 SMS bundles plan, Safaricom subscribers will spend 10 cents per SMS.

Safaricom customers will also be able to subscribe to the 20 SMSes bundles plan for KES 5 per day. Under this plan subscribers will get 20 SMSes all day for KES 5 per day. Once the 20 SMSes are exhausted, subscribers will be charged an out-of-bundle rate of KES 1 per SMS.

Under this plan the cost of sending each SMS is 0.25 cents.

The service is open to both prepay and postpay subscribers though not open to subscribers on Kama Kawaida.

The cost of sending SMSes to other local networks remains unchanged at KES 2 per SMS.

To subscribe to the service dial *188# and select the SMS bundle plan of your choice.

In related news, Airtel Kenya has re-launched its prepaid SMS bundles, giving users the option of subscribing to different SMS bundles of their choice and in turn spending as low as 20 cents on SMSes.