Safaricom firms up Internet market share with 43pc home fibre link rise
A sign showing Fibre ready zone in Nyeri town. This service enables subscribers access from their homes through fibre provided by Safaricom. FILE PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NMG
Safaricom increased the number of homes it has connected to its fibre Internet network by 42.8 percent to 275,657 during the 12-month period to March this year, pointing to a growing demand following the easing of the Covid-19-related distress.
In its latest sustainability report, the telco further indicated that it has expanded its fibre optic footprint by 28.7 percent to reach 14,000 kilometres up from 10,880 in the previous year.
During the same period, the number of connected enterprise buildings increased by 31.2 percent to stand at 6,305, up from 4,807 in the year to March 2022, while the number of individual enterprise customers rose 23.5 percent to 21,000 up from 17,000 in the previous year.
“There was a significant increase in fibre to the home (FTTH) and enterprise buildings connected. This was facilitated by early planning based on the provision of timely profiling information by the channels team advising where fibre was to be rolled out,” said the firm in the report.
It added:“The accelerated expansion of our fibre footprint by 3,120 kilometres was due to overhead deployment of data driven planning which prioritised certain regions for fibre rollout.”
The increased fibre connections slightly deepened Safaricom’s fixed Internet market share to 35.9 percent up from the 35.8 percent recorded as of March 2022, according to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) data.
The CA data shows that Safaricom had a total of 399,333 subscribers as of March this year, cementing its dominance in the market whose closest rivals include Jamii Telecommunications Limited (JTL) and Wananchi Group which trades as Zuku.
The duo enjoyed 23.2 and 22.7 percentage market shares respectively as of March this year.
“Fibre to the Home (FTTH) recorded the highest number of fixed broadband subscriptions whereas most fixed broadband subscribers were subscribed to speeds between 2Mbps and 10Mbps,” said the CA in its industry report for the three-month period to March.
Others angling for a pie in the market include Poa Internet, Liquid Communications, Mawingu Networks, Dimension Data Solutions, Vilcom Network and Telkom Kenya.
