According to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), the country has about 1,331,226 fixed internet subscriptions. These subscribers rely mainly on 9 main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Kenya. For the period between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, nPerf, a French internet analysis company, carried out tests to determine Kenya’s best ISP.
The Kenya ISP analysis focused on Safaricom which has a 36.7% market share, Jamii Telcom (Faiba) with 23.7%, Zuku (19.6%), Mawingu Network (2%) and Telkom Kenya. Surprisingly, nPerf did not perform analysis on Poa Internet which has a significant market share of 12.8%.
Kenya ISP Speeds
Performance analysis focussed on various metrics. Download speeds, the speed at which data is transferred from the internet to a device, was one metric. In this category, Telkom Kenya was ranked best for Fixed internet in Kenya. Kenya’s oldest telco registered 33.04 Mb/s a healthy gap ahead of Faiba (27.73 Mb/s) and Zuku (22.75 Mb/s).
For context, download speeds greater than 25 Mb/s are classified as excellent, enabling activities such as 4K video streaming. Safaricom ranked low in download speeds with 19.76 Mb/s and Mawingu was way behind at 7.16 Mb/s.
Telkom Kenya was again the best in internet upload speeds in Kenya. Speeds of 27.97 Mb/s puts it first with Faiba (21.63 Mb/s) coming in second again.
Zuku and Mawingu boast of the country’s lowest average broadband latency, with Zuku clocking in at 39 milliseconds and Mawingu at a close 41 milliseconds. Latency is a measure of how quickly your internet connection reacts. Imagine it like waiting in line – a shorter wait time (lower latency) means you can interact with content faster. Good latency, which is between 31 and 100 milliseconds, means you should experience smooth internet performance with little to no delay. All 4 ISPs fell within this range with Telkom Kenya having the worst latency of 68.39 ms.
Read: How Kenyans connect to the Internet from Submarine Cable Infrastructure, ISPs to Personal Devices
According to a browsing speed test designed to measure loading times for Kenya’s most visited websites, Faiba, Safaricom, and Zuku emerged as the top internet service providers for web browsing. Faiba took the lead with the fastest loading times, averaging around 6.2 seconds per page (success rate of 38%). Safaricom and Zuku were close behind, both achieving good results with an average page load time around the same speed (success rate of 37%).
For optimal YouTube streaming performance with minimal buffering interruptions, a score of 75% or higher is recommended. Only Safaricom at 74.53% and Faiba at 70.81% came close. Again, in this category, Telkom Kenya had the lowest score with 57.13%.
Overall, Faiba registered good performances in all categories of fixed internet, making it the best ISP in Kenya for the year 2024.
Mobile Internet Speeds in Kenya
For Mobile internet, Safaricom came out top in 3 of the 4 categories. Kenya’s largest telco has the fastest download speeds (21.65 Mb/s), upload speeds (9.25 Mb/s), and best YouTube streaming score (77.20%).
Airtel Kenya did well emerging with a YouTube streaming score of 75.65%. This means Kenyans on Safaricom and Airtel Kenya cellular networks tend to enjoy high-quality user experience in video streaming services. Airtel averages 17 Mbps for downloads and 4 Mbps for uploads. Last year, the company launched an expansion drive for further deployment of LTE on the 2600Mhz band for capacity expansion and rolled out of 5G.
Faiba on its part had the best latency score (39.98ms) for cellular internet connections in Kenya.
Data from internet performance metrics indicate Kenya’s mobile download speeds have surpassed several African counterparts. Kenya boasts a national average of 19 Mbps, outperforming countries like Nigeria (12 Mbps) and Egypt, Algeria, and Cameroon (all around 9 Mbps). The Democratic Republic of Congo currently trails at 7.5 Mbps.
