We tweeted them up inquiring as to why they had done this. Their response was that ‘this has been done to ensure optimisation of resources and [in order to] give you a better experience’. Don’t be alarmed though, this new development does not mean that Airtel has reduced the pricing on their data bundles. They simply reduced on the options to decongest their bundles. The remaining monthly data bundles include 125MB at UGX 5,000, 250MB at UGX 10,000, 525MB at UGX 20,000 and 1GB at UGX 35,000, etc. If you so badly want your 350MB bundle, you can simply buy both the 125MB and the 250MB bundles at a total cost of UGX 15,000 (same as the old price for 350MB). You will get 375MB at UGX 15,000 which is actually 15MB more than the 350MB bundle and at the same price.
The issue unfortunately arises with the bigger bundles such as 750MB and 1.5GB. Using our previous calculation, we get 650MB for UGX 25,000 (adding 125MB and 525MB) which sucks. Similarly UGX 45,000 gives us 1.175 GB which was previously 1.5GB. We have never used the 17GB bundle because frankly there are other options available, so we won’t even go there. If you feel wounded by Airtel’s new direction, you can get 1GB from Vodafone at UGX 29,900 (UGX 5,000 less than Airtel). The price for 1 GB is the same at MTN Uganda so no luck there.
