Safaricom has announced plans to enter the home internet market, in partnership with Jamii Telecom. They are planning to connect 100,000 homes to the inland fibre optic cable in order to tap into the largely underpenetrated home internet market. The two intend to invest KES 1.2bn in the connection of households to the inland and undersea fibre optic cable, a move that will be the first in the market as other internet players have tendered to connect to households using landline copper cable, modems and Wi-Max frequencies.
The move will widen Safaricom internet services such as larger capacity, video conferencing and television viewing, services that the mobile telephony firm cannot offer using its current modem platform. Safaricom also has WiMax frequencies—wireless internet—to connect homes, but the limited frequencies has slowed wide scale deployment of wireless data networks.
This will place Safaricom in a head to head battle with Access Kenya for control of the homes internet market that has attracted other internet firms such as Wananchi Online, Telkom Kenya and Swift global.
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