For impact on users, size and speed matter beyond just connectivity. FILE PHOTO | NMG
In the past half-decade, Kenya has seen a surge in the amount of
high-speed broadband adoption with the country’s Internet users growing
exponentially.
The Kenya National Bureau of
Statistics (KNBS) says in 2010, the total available bandwidth capacity
was 202,720 Mbps. In 2016, it grew to two million, a nine-fold increase.
During same period, fixed fibre optic data
subscriptions to homes and businesses have grown, reducing the cost of
connectivity, and allowing more homes and businesses to be connected.
However,
despite this impressive Internet adoption, many high-populated areas in
downtown Nairobi and mainly residential Eastlands remain outside the
high-speed fibre grid.
Laying of fibre optic cables in Nairobi and other major towns
targeted upmarket areas, leaving out downtown and residential areas,
which are not considered economically attractive.
It is assumed that upmarket areas will adopt services faster and spend more.
Given
the informal nature of most businesses in downtown Nairobi, it is
assumed they spend less, while there is no evidence that, provided with
infrastructure, these businesses would not match upmarket businesses in
spend.
The neglected sections offer a huge untapped
potential for high value connections that can yield more high value
contribution to the gross domestic product.
On the
business front, this vast and busy area that includes the city’s Moi
Avenue, Tom Mboya and Ronald Ngala streets moving outwards to Kamukunji
and Gikomba districts are characterised by small and micro businesses
that form a huge part of the city’s economic output.
A
research conducted by the country’s ICT regulator, the Communications
Authority (CA), and the KNBS in 2016 on how businesses access the
Internet in their operations, found a lower capacity down the scale.
While
97 and 92 per cent of large and medium enterprises reported using fixed
broadband, the proportion was much lower among micro-enterprises at 71
per cent.
This further translated into limited connectivity within small and micro businesses.
While
93 per cent of large businesses reported having a local area network,
only 40 per cent of micro-enterprises reported the same.
This
is important because research has shown that for Internet connectivity
to have transformative value to users, size and speed matter beyond just
connectivity.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet, a
coalition of countries in Africa to which Kenya is a major participant,
recently advised African countries to revise measurements for evaluating
Internet connectivity from merely counting the individual number of SIM
cards purchased but also looking at how many users can afford 1GB of
data per month at less than two per cent of their monthly income.
This is because 1GB of data spread over a month is the amount considered to provide meaningful value to the user.
Higher
Internet speeds and broadband capacity would mean faster transactions
for online marketing — popular by the vast number of clothing, beauty
and make-up accessories shops spread in downtown Nairobi.
Sustainable
high-speed fibre networks also lay the foundation of evolving business
practices such as teleconferencing and cloud computing to take root.
For
some businesses, interconnecting their small shops (exhibition stores)
will allow them to save on manpower, general running costs and allow
them to open more shops.
For the big telecoms
infrastructure players, laying the fibre will allow them to get faster
returns but smaller businesses can overlay over these services.
For
instance, with the reduction in connectivity costs, smaller wifi
companies have come up, providing even cheaper services to users paying
Sh2,000 or less per month.
In the home Internet space,
demand for high-speed fibre has been boosted by the increased
subscriptions to multimedia streaming services.
Service
providers such as Netflix and ShowMax have ramped up their offerings in
the country to tap into this demand. Media monitoring site Geopol
recently found increased use of smart phones as second screens in homes.
The vast population in Nairobi’s Eastlands provides a
big opportunity for service providers to plug residential estates such
as Buru Buru, Umoja, Donholm, Ruai, Kasarani, Mwiki and Kayole to
high-speed fibre networks. It is high time service providers shifted
their focus downstream.
Ability to spend can no longer be determined by air-conditioned offices or well paved residential roads.
It is time to test Nairobi’s River Road area in terms of spend and ability to adopt new technology.
Rebecca Wanjiku, Chief executive officer, Fireside Group.
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