Kenya’s largest Telecom service competitors enter Joint Venture

Last Updated 14 years ago by Kenya Engineer

Kenya’s biggest telecom service providers and competitors, Safaricom and Airtel plan to form a joint venture in the laying of a fibre network in the coming financial year. The multi-million venture is aimed at cutting the reliance of third parties for wholesale internet.

“We are going to roll out the fibre in the coming financial year, it will involve partnering with other mobile operators”, said Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Bob Collymore.

The two firms, though continue to battle for control of Kenya’s telecom market-will share the cost of project. They are both eying a larger share of the data market to grow profits and compensate for the flat revenues in the voice market.

There has been a growing data demand from smartphone users and tablet computers which in turn is forcing to operators to invest in infrastructure like the fibre optic cable so as to provide faster and more efficient internet services.

The number of internet users in Kenya rose 95.6 percent year-on-year to 17.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2011.This is attributed to the increased mobile phone subscriptions according to the Communication Commission of Kenya. They add that mobile phones are the main mode of accessing internet and thus mobile operators have resulted to upgrading their networks to support high speed wireless services.

The move to lay down the cable by the two firms could hurt the earnings their wholesale internet providers-Access Kenya, Jamii Telecoms and Kenya Data Network (KDN).

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