A report by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) indicates that for the second quarter of the 2015/2016 financial year, internet penetration in the country went up from 74.2 % on the previous quarter to 82.6%. The report noted an 11 per cent growth in .KE domain names to 51,548 from 46,411 the previous quarter.
CA attributes the growth of the internet to the roll out of the first phase of the National Optic Fibre Broadband Infrastructure (NOFBI), the on-going roll out of Phase 2, and the increased last mile connection by private operators coupled with expansive roll out of 3G mobile communication.
Increased internet availability in lead to the increase in the number of Internet users during the period October to December 2015 which now stands at 35.5 million.
The number of Internet/data subscriptions jumped by 10.6 per cent to 23.9 million subscriptions up from 21.6 million subscriptions registered previously.
Mobile data subscriptions also increased 10.2 per cent from 21.5 million to 23.7 million driven by affordable bundle offers from the various service providers as a result of fair competition in the data market.
Around the period under review, Airtel Kenya introduced its UnlimiNet product which not only offers the most affordable cross-network voice, SMS and data rates in Kenya but also allows users to enjoy free Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, starting data price wars between the company and Safaricom.
The demand for Internet/data usage was also pushed by the exponential growth of e-commerce services, social networking, online mobile banking and online research on mobile devices.
