State-owned utility firm Kenya Power expects to start rolling out fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections in partnership with telecoms operator Safaricom in December this year, the company’s Managing Director Ben Chumo told Citizen Digital. An ISP subsidiary, known as Kenya Power International, has been established to operate the FTTH business, providing the utility firm with an alternative revenue stream. ‘We have close to five million homes connected to the grid and we want to take advantage of the grid to deliver the fibre to homes,’ Chumo said, adding that the internet service will be more affordable than rival offerings because Kenya Power will not have to dig trenches to lay the fibre-optic cables.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, Kenya Power signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Safaricom in April 2016 for the launch of a twelve-month fibre-optic pilot project that will initially see around 12,000 Nairobi households connected to the internet. Under the partnership, Safaricom agreed to lease Kenya Power’s fibre infrastructure, which stretches 4,000km in total, to provide homes with last-mile broadband connections.