THE ICT LANDSCAPE IN KENYA

KENYA: TELECOMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE AND LIBERALIZATION

The telecommunication sector in Kenya is the responsibility the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK)(2).Prior to 1998, the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Corporation (KPTC) was the sole provider of basic telecommunications services. In 1998, a modern regulatory regime was established by the Kenya Telecommunications Act, which set up the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) an independent industry regulator. Telkom Kenya was created in 1999 as a separate legal entity from the previous postal and telecommunications statutory body and is slated for privatisation, but this has been a very slow process. Cosequently, only Telkom Kenya has the license to operate a commercial International VSAT service. In January 2006, the tendering process to licence the Second National Operator (SNO) was cancelled. The process had began in November 2003. Five out of the seven firms that had expressed interest in the tender were pre-qualified. The firms were Telenor Group; ZTE/CNC/KENSIM; Pegrume Group; Detecon International; and SaskTel International. According to CCK Director-General Eng. John Waweru,the SNO licence as previously packaged could not accommodate current market trends and the technological realities of convergence. He however, acknowledged the fact that there is a sound business case for licensing another operator to compete with Telkom Kenya.

Nevertheless, the telecommunication sector as a whole has been liberalized and there are private companies entering the market. Currently, there are two private telephone companies, Safaricom (3) and Celtel (4). As a result, the number of telephone subscribers has risen rapidly over the past six years. In June 1999, Kenya had 15,000 mobile phone subscribers. By the end of 2004, there were more than 3.4 million subscribers (5).

Telkom Kenya Limited, owns 60% of Safaricom,while the remaining 40 % is owned by Vodafone AirTouch, which is headquartered in Newbury, Berkshire, with San Francisco serving as the US/Asia Pacific regional headquarters and technical centre for the combined Group. Individually, Safaricom serves about 600,000 customers. The quality of the network has improved substantially over the past few years.

Kenya hosts the African Advanced Level Telecommunication Institute (AFRALTI), an intergovernmental International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Anglophone sub-regional training centre. There is also a local training institute, Kenya Communications Institute (KCI), which provides local training in telecommunications.The Gilgil Telecommunication Institute (GTI), assembles and produces telecommunication equipment, such as modems and handsets, for the local and regional markets. With the liberalization of the market and the establishment of Internet Service Providers (ISP), access to the World Wide Web (WWW) is becoming common, but many people still have neither telephones nor electricity in their homes, and this is a limiting factor for their access to the World Wide Web. Fewer still are those who can afford a personal computer (PC).