Safaricom closes on Wananchi with fibre to the home connections
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 03 September 2019

Kenyan telco Safaricom has more than doubled its home fibre customer base to reach 297,885 households, driven by subscriptions to video streaming services such as iflix and Netflix.

The surge in its customer connections follows the laying of an additional 1,000 kilometres of fibre in the past year, bringing to 6,700 kilometres the amount of Safaricom fibre now passing 297,885 homes in the East African country.

Safaricom's market share for fixed internet services jumped from 29.6% at the end of 2018 to 31.5% at the end of March 2019, while that of Zuku’s parent Wananchi Group dropped to 35% from 38%, according to Communications Authority data.

"Part of our growth came with challenges including lower speeds due to large downloads and introduction of excise duty tax which necessitated a change in our 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 its annualreport.

"We continue to increase usage through affordable tiered pricing. We see future opportunity in converged service of data, content, smart home and fixed mobile.”

Safaricom now also provides fibre coverage to 2,400 businesses.

The company’s charges for the service are tiered with home customer pricing starting at Sh3,900 for a 5Mbps speed bundle and Sh5,000 for small and medium enterprises.