Safaricom
Safaricom to Launch 5G Network on Friday.
Kenyan Telco Giant, Safaricom, will on Friday launch the inaugural fifth-generation (5G) mobile internet service in East Africa, targeting major urban centers that usually experience more data traffic. The service will be launched in partnership with leading global 5G suppliers the Nokia Corporation and Huawei.
The urban centers set for the maiden roll-out are Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Bungoma.
“Safaricom will be the first operator in East Africa to launch 5G services and will be showcasing the capabilities of the network with the aid of Huawei and Nokia technologies, ”the telco said.
In February this year, the then acting CEO, Michael Joseph said the firm had completed testing and trials for the upgraded network as the company sought to capitalize on the growing need for mobile internet users in the country. The network was built by the Chinese firm Huawei technologies.
Huawei has been facing a lot of scrutiny by several governments over fears of using their devices to spy on citizens of a country. The US government on May 15 announced its campaign against Huawei claiming that the mobile networks that rely on Huawei could allow espionage and sabotage by China due to the relationship between Huawei and the Chinese government. In 2019, the company became the 2nd global seller of smartphones behind Samsung while at the same time surpassing Apple.
The 5G launch will follow the December 2015 unveiling of the 4G network, which has helped Safaricom grow its revenues from data to Sh49.6 billion last year from Sh17.9 billion in 2015.
The network provider had earlier suspended the launch of the service in January on the basis that millions of people using 2G and 3G should all upgrade to the 4G network first.
The telco targeted 80% of the Kenyan population with its 4G network coverage by doubling it to 5000 base stations by March 2020 covering all major urban areas.
The web data revenue from Safaricom grew 3 times over the past 5 years to Ksh 49.6B last year. This growth has followed the 4G launch when the revenue had been Ksh 17.9B.
Subscribers who want to use the service will need to acquire new handsets that are compatible with 5G before they can enjoy the super-fast internet, which offers much faster data download and upload speeds that ultimately ease network congestion.
Out of Kenya’s 58.9M mobile subscribers, 42.8M have mobile data subscriptions majority being Safaricom Mobile data. This according to the year quarter ended in September.
By Joy Ngoiri
