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Huawei takes aim at Kenya's home Internet market

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Internet penetration remains a major challenge in Kenya. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Huawei yesterday announced that it will work closely with locally licensed internet service providers like Safaricom #ticker to deploy wireless internet to homes and businesses in remote areas.

Operators will have to first set up Huawei’s 4.5G wireless broadband solutions on their existing infrastructure, for instance the 4G base stations, to roll it out to the public. The wireless internet plan unlike the fiber network is easy and fast to deploy.

The solution targets to provide services to densely populated urban and remote areas without access to internet.

“Internet penetration remains a major challenge in Kenya and in Africa as a whole, and it is for this reason that Huawei Technologies has worked to provide an affordable solution that provides the same user experience as fibre,” said Huawei Kenya, senior director public affairs, Adam Lane.

“The Huawei’s internet solution enables operators to roll-out high-speed home and business broadband quickly, whilst reducing infrastructure costs which increases their return on investment and ensures a great service for consumers.”

Latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows that there were 54,700 fixed fibre-optic subscriptions at the end of June 2017, compared to 27,571 connections recorded by the end of the same period last year.

The growing number of subscription for on-demand services like Showmax, Iflix and Netflix allowing people to stream programmes in Kenya and more people opting to work from home have led to higher demand for internet in residential buildings.

READ: Safaricom, Huawei eye homes in fibre Internet deal