Synopsis
Kenya’s telecommunications and broadband market is undergoing a revolution following the arrival of three fibre-optic international submarine cables in (Seacom, TEAMS and EASSy), ending its dependency on limited and expensive satellite bandwidth. The country's international bandwidth increased more than eleven-fold in 2011. Prices had already fallen significantly following the liberalisation of international gateway and national backbone network provision in 2005, but they have now fallen by more than 90%, enabling cheaper tariffs for telephone calls and broadband internet services. In parallel, the sector regulator, the Communications Commission of Kenya has mandated price cuts on interconnection tariffs and proposed new competition regulations.
The country’s incumbent fixed-line telco, Telkom Kenya, is revamping its infrastructure and services under the Orange brand with fresh capital from its new majority shareholder, France Telecom, and it has also re-entered the mobile market. A simplified and converged licensing regime introduced in 2008 has lowered the barriers to market entry and increased competition by allowing operators to offer any kind of service in a technology- and service-neutral regulatory framework. Various competitors such as Kenya Data Networks, AccessKenya and Jamii Telecom are rolling out national and metropolitan fibre backbones and wireless access networks to take the new bandwidth and services to population centres across the country. Several fibre infrastructure sharing agreements have been forged.
Companies covered in this report:
- Telkom Kenya (Orange, France Telecom);
- Kenya Data Networks (KDN);
- Jamii Telecom;
- Access Kenya;
- Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC);
- Kenya Pipeline Corporation (KPC);
- Wananchi;
- Safaricom.
