Telkom Kenya holds talks over two submarine cable landing deals

9th October 2018

By: Reuters

  

Font size: - +

Telkom Kenya is in talks with two unnamed parties over partnerships to allow it to sell high speed internet capacity from two undersea data cables that are about to land in the East African nation, its CEO said on Tuesday.

The operator, which is the smallest in Kenya behind Safaricom and Bharti Airtel's Kenyan unit, has been focusing on data to gain market share. It already distributes capacity from three other undersea cables, using its extensive fibre network in the country.

"The combination of affordable data options, strong network coverage across the country... catering to a data hungry market, has enabled us to become the preferred data network," Aldo Mareuse, the CEO of Telkom, told a news conference.

It says it has the cheapest data plan in the market, offering 2GB for 99 shillings ($0.9826).

Safaricom, the dominant operator with nearly 70% of the market, cut its internet connection prices last month in response to Telkom's aggressive positioning.

Telkom, 60% owned by London-based Helios Investment with the rest held by the government, had 4.1-million users, about 9% of the market, as of July this year.

"We are now putting in place an aggressive market engagement campaign, to strengthen our push towards 5-million customers and beyond," Mareuse said.

He called on the regulator to ensure agents of Telkom's mobile money service T-Kash could work with those of Safaricom's M-Pesa platform on cash transfers and other transactions, to boost competition in the sector.

The two mobile money wallets were interlinked last week, allowing customers of either service to send money to each other seamlessly, but Mareuse said the agent and merchant integration networks were critical.

The integration of the two agent networks, together with those of Airtel's financial service, is one of the recommendations contained in a draft study on competition, which Safaricom has objected to.

Edited by Reuters

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION