5.6.2 Reliable, Affordable, and Secure
Broadband Connectivity
Access to broadband connectivity has been identified
globally as key driver of economic development, so-
cio-economic wellbeing and innovation. Broadband
connectivity in Kenya has experienced tremendous
growth largely due to government initiatives, liberal-
ization, and a robust regulatory environment. Howev-
er, despite heavy investment in broadband connectiv-
ity infrastructure, there exists a wide “digital divide”
in the access to connectivity services in the country.
Previous studies have been conducted to establish the
extent of the digital divide in Kenya. For example,
in their study, the Communications Authority (CA) in
the year 2016 established that there are more than 580
sub-locations with less than 50% GSM population
coverage, of which 164 had no mobile signal at all.
Further, there were 2,221 sub-locations with less than
50% 3G population coverage, of which 1,221 have
no access to 3G services at all. Additionally, there is
low geographical coverage of broadband services; for
example, 50% of locations have no 3G services; while
83% of the land mass lacks broadband services cover-
age. Finally, fiber optic cables only cover 60,000 km
(17% land coverage).
Several efforts have been put in place to bridge the
gaps in the digital divide and these include:
i. Investments by private sector operators to expand
backbone and last-mile access networks using
optical fiber (inter-county fiber, metro fiber net-
works), 3G, 4G, FTTH, FTTB, WiMax and WiFi
technologies.
ii. Government initiatives such as the National Op-
tical Fiber Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI),
TEAMS, Government Common Core Network,
Kenya Transparency and Communication Infra-
structure Project, Kenya Education Network Trust
(KENET), Security Infrastructure among others.
iii. Investment in broadband network infrastrastruc-
ture for research and education covering higher ed-
ucation and research ecosystem, tertiary colleges,
hospitals and schools.
iv. Initiatives by the Communications Authority us-
ing the Universal Service Fund (USF) such as the
Voice Infrastructure and Services Project (provi-
sion of basic mobile services to unreached sub-lo-
cations) and the Education Broadband Project
(provision of Internet bandwidth to public second-
ary schools).
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DIGITAL ECONOMY BLUEPRINT
Critical infrastructure that support broadband connec-
tivity needs to be identified and secured. The critical
infrastructure should also be designed and imple-
mented to ensure scalability and elasticity that will
meet current and future demands of the country. Some
of the critical infrastructure include:
i. The country’s top level domain operated by
KeNIC.
ii. The national exchange points operated by
TESPOK, where different broadband connectivity
operators exchange data traffic.
iii. National Optical Fiber Backbone Infrastructure
(NOFBI) and other inter-county optical fiber
installations.
iv. Subsea Optical fiber infrastructure such as
TEAMS, SEACOM, EASsy and DARE.
v. Public and Carrier-neutral Data centers hosting
other critical infrastructure installations.
To further improve the penetration of broadband con-
nectivity, initiatives geared towards implementing
cost-effective last mile access solutions should be ad-
opted by both the private sector and the government.
Extension of fiber to the home where a critical mass
of users has been established coupled with last-mile
WiFi access should be encouraged.
Further, implementation of intelligent, secure and
low energy consumption technologies such as 5G,
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), LoRa, among others,
should be encouraged to spearhead the push towards a
highly connected society that will support a digitized
economy.
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