Liquid Telecom is set to enter the country's fibre-to-home (FTTH)segment while having a keen focus on expanding connectivity to the country's counties as its next focus of growth.
In an interview at the sidelines of last week's East Africa Com in Nairobi with CIO East Africa, Ben Roberts, CEO, Liquid Telcom Kenya said the firm will however be strategic in its roll-out, avoiding areas already covered with competitor's infrastructure.
"We're looking at Fibre-to-the-Home roll-out. And we intend to be strtategic on where we roll-out and will be keenly looking at multiple dwelling units. Nairobi has a lot of blocks of flats going up mostly in affluent areas where people with young families are based. We are looking at just going into the estates and building a fibre to every single door. We know these are people with a abit of money to spend and want braodband access. The areas we're targeting are places like Embakasi," said Roberts.
Getting into the Fibre-to-the-Home segment of the market will see Liquid Telecom getting into a market which already has some established service providers, key examples being Safaricom, Jamii Telecom and Zuku. However, Liquid Telecom doesn't intend to literally take the competition to the doorsteps of the established players by putting up fibre infrastructure where there's already an existing one(s).
"We're not going to have our fibre where there's already an existing one, like say if Zuku is already in a location we won't go there as it's pointless to compete on infrastructure roll-out. If a competitor already has fibre in an area then it's pointless to roll-out another fibre in the same area. We'll basically be setting up our fibre infrastructure where there's none at the moment," stated Roberts, adding that this makes no business sense.
"If you build fibre to an area with 100 houses and only 25 per cent of the tenants take up the service, even if another provider decides to build another fibre system, they are not going to get any more customers. You'll just be fighting over the 25 per cent who've taken up the service already. And it doesnt make sense. That's why we won't invest where there's already an existing infrastructure," he explained.
The two projects - FTTH and County Connectivity - will be covered under the US $ 50 million (Kshs 4.35 billion) investment in Kenya that Liquid Telecom announced recently. Apart from expanding county connectivity and the FTTH project, the Kshs 4.35 billion budget will also cover the backbone works, metro rings and the expansion of the East Africa Data Centre - already completed at a cost of US $ 10 million (Kshs 870 million).
Roberts added that in expsnding conectivity to counties, Liquid Telecom is working with County Governments. "Recently we implemented our fibre in Siaya which was previously very underseved with no fibre optic connection. We are looking at other areas in Western Kenya. We are already in 37 of the 47 Counties in Kenya. We are currently have works underway in 2 others, meaning we'll soon have covered 39 counties," he started, adding that the target is to have all the 47 counties covered by fibre infrastructure by mid 2015.
The Communication Authority of Kenya's (CAK) latest industry stats - covering the period from January to March 2014- states that over the last three quarters, the number of broadband subscriptions has been growing with the quarter under review registering 0.9 per cent growth to reach 1.44 million subscriptions from 1.43 million subscriptions recorded during the previous quarter, adding compared to the same period the previous year, this equals an increase of 1.9 per cent.
In terms of fixed/wireless internet subscriptions by operator over the same period, Wananchi Telecom (which operates the Zuku brand) had 44,254 clients (44.7 per cent market share), followed by Liquid Telecom with 17,600 clients (17.8 per cent market share). Access Kenya was third with 11,360 customers translating to 11.5 per cent of the overall market.
