In 2015, Kenya Power announced it was considering venturing into the home internet business. The company was to rely on its extensive distribution footprint to actualize the plan and with an already established customer base, payment infrastructure, the plan seemed plausible. Early this year, the company announced its subsidiary Kenya Power International was going to partner with telco Safaricom to actualize the plan.
As per the partnership, Safaricom and Kenya Power International were to conduct a pilot for fiber to the home in 12,000 homes for a period of 12 months. Kenya Power has now announced it will begin roll out of the solution in December 2015. KPLC recently announced it has connected over 5 Million households with electricity and the roll out of the solution country wide could reach 20 Million people. Through the partnership, Safaricom will lease broadband infrastructure owned by Kenya Power in the roll out of its last mile network. Kenya Power already owns and operates more than 4,000km in length of fibre optic cable network in Kenya, which it leases to the major telecom players in the country.
Safaricom has to date rolled out 3,200km of fibre reaching 7,000 homes and has been looking to expand into this segment which the partnership provides. The entry of KPLC into this segment will see KPLC reduce its reliance on electricity sales as sources of revenue while at the same time increasing broadband coverage across the country. The service is also expected to be cheaper than what is currently offered in the market as KPLC already has its network ready, meaning no additional costs of digging trenches.
