Safaricom has now reported a new traffic data high that was achieved during the finals matches of the Euro and Copa America 2024 tournaments two weekends ago, with Kenyans choosing to livestream both ties on mobile devices.
According to the telco, the data traffic peak was recorded especially during the Euros final match as Spain took on England in Berlin, hitting 3.96 petabytes (3,961 terabytes). This reflects the highest traffic data Safaricom has recorded since it was established 25 years ago.
As reported by Business Daily, this peak is a testament to Safaricom’s investment in more cable networks over the years.
To illustrate the magnitude of this milestone, Safaricom says that up to 100,000 phones would be required each with a storage capacity to hold 128GB to keep all the data that was streaming through its network during the Euro final.
“This is very exciting for us, having no issues and no complaints as Kenyans streamed good quality football from overseas using the undersea cable network in which we have invested quite heavily,” stated the company’s chief technology and information officer George Njuguna.
Safaricom has stated that its entire international data throughput has been about 500GB since the beginning of 2024, with the capacity now increased to 700GB. The firm also promises that it will continue to enhance its network sites to avoid data congestion.
“Anytime we’re streaming games, this information is coming from data centres that are outside the continent most of the time. So that means we have to have an undersea cable network with enough capacity to carry because there are times and there are some networks that can’t stream on that,” added Mr Njuguna.
