The Communications Authority of Kenya has released their latest Sector Statistics and it has shown that fixed broadband connections have shot up 12% in a quarter, which is quite high.
According to the report, Kenya has a total of 429,382 fixed subscriptions which is a 11.92% jump compared to what was reported last quarter (383,638).
Interestingly, Wananchi Group took back the top spot from Safaricom in the fixed data market. Safaricom had passed them last quarter but now they are back with a bang.
Wananchi Group now has 175,433 subscriptions, which is up from the 151,548 number they posted last quarter. These returns have an asterisk where they also include numbers for Wananchi Telecom’s subsidiaries (Wananchi Telcom and Simbanet). Safaricom is second with 165,810 subscriptions, up from 154,603 subscriptions reported last quarter. Wananchi Group and Safaricom now control 68.1% of the fixed data market.
Jamii Telecom is still third with 78,149 subscriptions. Poa Internet is 4th with 45,577 subscriptions. Mawingu Networks has 10,390 subscriptions and Liquid Telecom has 9,444 subscriptions.
The regulator also broke down for the first time the number of fixed fiber optic data subscribers. The total number is usually a summation of fixed cable modem subscribers, fixed fiber optic, fixed DSL data and other fixed data subscribers.
In the breakdown, Kenya had 268,753 fiber-optic subscribers and 158,188 fixed cable subscribers. This represented 99.43% of the total fixed data subscribers in the country.
The report also highlighted the total internet bandwidth variation between the quarters. The total utilized bandwidth rose by a massive 80% to 2,720.26 Gbps. This is thanks to a huge quarterly increase in undersea bandwidth capacity by TEAMS, which rose from 1,000 to 1,618Gbps during the quarter. EASSY also increased from 1280Gbps to 1430Gbps and SEACOM still leads with 2,940Gbps which is up from 2,840Gbps reported last quarter.
