Utilized satellite capacity increased by 74.9% between October and December last year in what Communications Authority (CA) links to the growing uptake of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite internet services in the country offered by Starlink.
- •Satellite internet capacity stood at 34,141,040.438 Gbps compared to July-September period’s 19,516,150.438 Gbps sold in Kenya and other countries.
- •The number of satellite data subscribers rose by 13.9%, from 17, 042 in September to 19, 403 in December 2024.
- •LEO service Starlink now holds 1.1% share of the fixed data market, still marginal compared to other players such as Safaricom (36.1%), Jamii Telecom (23.6%), and Wananchi Group (15.4%).
“The total available international Internet bandwidth capacity in the country remained unchanged at 22,154.438 Gbps. This is because the undersea cable providers did not lease any additional capacity within the quarter. However, the total utilized undersea bandwidth capacity rose by 1.3per cent to 15,479.860 Gbps, out of which 12,526.040 Gbps were used in the country whereas 2,953.820 Gbps were sold outside the country,” CA said in the quarterly statistics.
Starlink began commercial operations in Kenya in July 2023, but initially the service was expensive compared to other internet connectivity services. At the time, Starlink charged KSh 89,000 for the terminal kit and KSh 6,500 a month. Since then, prices have come down, with the terminals now costing KSh 45,500, and data packages as low as KSh 1,300 per month for residential packages.
The fifth largest fixed data provider is now Vilcom Network Limited, which doubled its market share to 3.2% after the launch of a new product. Overall, more than a third of fixed internet subscribers sought data speeds between 10 Mbps and 30 Mbps, marking a shift from previous quarters during which most customers had subscribed to data speeds between 2Mbps and 10Mbps.
During the last three months of 2024, mobile data subscriptions grew by 3.2 percent to 56.1 million of which 78.4 percent were on mobile broadband. Mobile broadband volume consumed increased by 12.8 percent to 568,315.8 Terabytes, with the average mobile broadband consumption per mobile broadband subscription increased from 12.6 GB to 13.1 GB.
Online activities such as streaming movies, online learning, remote work, and among others have accelerated demand for high-speed internet leading to increased uptake of higher generation mobile technologies as is the case of 4G and 5G.
