This archive report was first published on 1 September 2019.
Published on September 1, 2019, Safaricom has made significant strides in expanding its home fibre network, connecting over 297,885 households across the country.
The telco has more than doubled its fibre network, with the majority of the additions made in 2019, reaching a total of 107,762 households.
According to Safaricom's latest annual report, the company laid out an additional 1,000 kilometres of fibre in the period, bringing the total fibre length to 6,700 kilometres that passed by 297,885 homes, up from 141,700 the previous period.
The network expansion has also seen Safaricom increase its fibre coverage to reach 2,400 businesses, offering a range of services including data, content, and smart home solutions.
The company's fibre charges are tiered, with home customer pricing starting at Sh3,900 for a 5 megabits per second (Mbps) speed bundle and Sh5,000 entry price for small and medium enterprises.
Speaking on the growth, Safaricom noted that part of its success came with challenges, including lower speeds due to large downloads and the introduction of excise duty tax, which necessitated a change in pricing.
“We had infrastructure upgrades done in September and October of 2018 to provide additional capacity and address the challenges our home customers experienced,” said Safaricom in the report.
“We continue to increase usage through affordable tiered pricing. We see future opportunity in converged service of data, content, smart home and fixed mobile,” the company added.
According to the latest data from the Communications Authority (CA), Safaricom increased its market share of fixed internet services for the seventh consecutive quarter to 31.5 percent, cutting the dominance of Zuku internet's parent company Wananchi Group.
