Safaricom hits 1 million home internet users. Now comes the hard part

Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecoms operator, has become the first internet service provider in the country to surpass one million fixed broadband subscribers. According to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), the company had 1,024,950 subscribers by the end of June 2026, turning a business that was barely present nine years ago into a major growth driver.

The milestone gives Safaricom a 36.1% market share and validates a volume-led strategy. Management used its existing mobile money and cellular networks to bring home broadband into the same ecosystem, linking more services around the customer.

Yet this broadband empire faces structural strain. While Safaricom suppressed short-term profit margins to acquire users to capture market share, its aggressive data-throttling policy has ignited consumer backlash.

At the same time, newly recapitalised rivals are mounting aggressive challenges, and barriers to entry have become so severe that global telecommunications giants are retreating from the infrastructure layer entirely.

The ecosystem trap and volume economics

Safaricom’s primary competitive advantage has been its reach across mobile and mobile money. As of June 2026, the company controlled almost 70% of mobile subscriptions and 88% of mobile money transfers, giving it a large customer base to sell home internet alongside mobile services.

With products like Family Share, customers can link home broadband to mobile data, voice minutes, and SMS. The strategy turned fibre from a standalone service into part of a broader mobile package, making it harder for customers to leave. Switching networks means giving up both the home connection and the bundled mobile benefits.

Commercially, the firm chose volume over near-term revenue per customer. In April 2026, the telco doubled fibre speeds across most residential plans without raising prices. The 15 megabits per second (Mbps) plan more than doubled to 40 Mbps for KES 3,000 ($23) a month, while the 30 Mbps tier doubled to 60 Mbps for KES 4,100 ($32). The move put pressure on fibre-to-the-home average revenue per user, which fell 2.5% year on year to KES 2,297 ($17.73) in the latest financial year.

Safaricom Home Fibre

The speed premium gets steeper — but Mbps get cheaper

Safaricom’s monthly bill rises sharply as bandwidth increases. Switch the view to see what happens to the effective price of each Mbps.

Monthly price Price per Mbps

Source: Safaricom Home Fibre plans, April 2026. USD equivalents are shown from the supplied figures.

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***Table 1: Current Safaricom Home Fibre plans and cost ***

The strategy is starting to pay off, with fixed services and Internet of Things (IoT) revenue rising 12.2% to KES 20.2 billion ($156.2 million), helped by a 45.9% jump in connected homes. The rise comes as traditional messaging revenue fell 11.8% as users moved to internet-based platforms. Meanwhile, Safaricom posted record net income of KES 95.6 billion ($738 million) in the financial year ended March 2026.

The company also saw a wide gap in fixed internet access between urban and rural areas. Urban penetration stands at 17.3%, compared with just 0.6% in rural areas. Safaricom cut fixed broadband installation costs by half as it pushed into underserved, high-density areas.

Its KES 1,600 ($12.40) WiFi Bamba package, a lower-cost fibre plan available in selected estates, helped Safaricom target peri-urban customers who had largely relied on budget providers such as Poa Internet. Poa’s market share later fell to 8.8% after four consecutive quarters of decline.

The Airtel casualty and infrastructure barriers

Safaricom’s scale in Kenya’s broadband market has made it harder for rivals to build viable alternatives. Airtel Africa is a clear example: in September, it began winding down its Kenyan wholesale fibre subsidiary, Airtel Kenya Telesonic Limited, after two years on the books without generating any commercial revenue.

Telesonic was meant to sell wholesale bandwidth to internet providers, banks and data centres. By the time Airtel entered the market, much of the available business was already tied up. Safaricom, Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Seacom had built major terrestrial routes and secured carrier contracts, leaving Telesonic to compete for a limited pool of corporate customers.

The subsidiary eventually surrendered its tier-two network facilities licence and posted a net loss of KES 16.1 million ($124,800) in 2025. The licence surrender also forced Telesonic to write off its remaining KES 14 million ($108,500) value.

Airtel Networks Kenya still operates XStream Fibre, its separate retail home internet service. Telesonic’s failure points to a deeper infrastructure problem. Even a multinational telecoms group with deep pockets struggled to build a viable wholesale fibre business in a market where established operators already controlled key routes and corporate customers.

The throttling miscalculation

Safaricom’s April speed upgrades came with a less visible change. The company raised speeds across its Home Fibre plans while cutting the amount of data customers could use before their connections were throttled under a fair usage policy (FUP). In November 2025, Safaricom had raised the FUP limit to 15TB across all tiers. Five months later, the company cut those limits again as part of the April speed changes, with the 40 Mbps plan falling to 1.5 terabytes (TB) and Silver to 2 TB.

Table 2: Safaricom Home Fibre’s FUP

Safaricom Home Fibre’s FUP

The revised data limits and throttled speeds across all tiers following the April speed upgrades.

Speed in Mbps New FUP in TB Post-FUP speed in Mbps 40 1.5 4 60 2 8 150 5 20 500 7 25 1000 7 25

Source: Safaricom Home Fibre terms, April 2026.

Together, these changes make the shift more noticeable. Faster connections let households consume data more quickly, while the lower caps bring the throttling point closer. A customer who reaches 1.5TB sees their 40 Mbps connection throttled to 4 Mbps for the rest of the billing cycle.

The change also caught customers off guard because the headline speed upgrades were more visible than the revised FUP limits. Safaricom’s current terms state that the FUP manages network resources and throttles speeds once customers reach the limits set by their plans.

Rivals capitalise on the data deficit

Safaricom’s stringent fair usage policy has given rivals a clear opening, particularly among customers who use large amounts of data. Independent network tests for the year ended March 2026 put Faiba, operated by Jamii Telecommunications, at an average download speed of 62.68 Mbps, compared with 33.96 Mbps for Safaricom.

Faiba’s appeal is that it does not impose an FUP, giving heavy data users a way to avoid the throttling associated with Safaricom’s Home Fibre plans.

The wider market is also getting fresh capital. In November 2025, AXIAN Telecom acquired 99.63% of Wananchi Group, the parent company of Zuku and Simbanet. The transaction was backed by KES 9.6 billion ($62.5 million) in IFC financing. AXIAN said the deal gives it access to more than one million homes across the region.

Zuku has had to compete in a market where its footprint and network investment have lagged behind those of larger rivals. Fresh ownership gives the business more room to invest in its fibre network and compete for customers in areas where its infrastructure overlaps with Safaricom’s.

Starlink is adding another option at the higher end of the market, with 27,616 subscriptions and a 1% share of Kenya’s fixed data market by June 2026. However, its reach differs from that of fibre. Starlink can serve households outside terrestrial fibre networks, giving customers in areas with limited fixed broadband another option.

The challenge beyond one million

The FUP Reality Check

Estimate your household’s monthly internet use and see how it compares with Safaricom’s Home Fibre FUP thresholds.

HD/4K video streaming (Netflix, YouTube) Assumes 3 GB/hour 4 hours/day Video calls & WFH (Zoom, Teams) Assumes 1.5 GB/hour 2 hours/day Large downloads (Gaming, updates) 50 GB/month Your Usage 0.0 TB 1.5 TB 40 Mbps

KES 2,999 2 TB 60 Mbps

KES 4,100 5 TB 150 Mbps

KES 6,300 7 TB 500 Mbps · KES 12,500 1 Gbps · KES 20,000 Both share 7 TB FUP. After the FUP threshold Safaricom’s terms state that speeds are reduced after the applicable FUP threshold is reached. 40 Mbps → 4 Mbps 500 Mbps → 25 Mbps 1 Gbps → 25 Mbps Plan Speed FUP Price 40 Mbps 40 Mbps 1.5 TB KES 2,999 60 Mbps 60 Mbps 2 TB KES 4,100 150 Mbps 150 Mbps 5 TB KES 6,300 500 Mbps 500 Mbps 7 TB KES 12,500 1 Gbps 1,000 Mbps 7 TB KES 20,000

Methodology: Estimated usage assumes 3 GB/hour for video streaming, 1.5 GB/hour for video calls, 2 GB/day of background household usage, and the monthly download amount entered above. Actual consumption varies by video quality, device, application and household behaviour.

Source: Safaricom Home Fibre plans, April 2026.

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Safaricom’s broadband growth has come from its large mobile customer base, an established fibre network and pricing that has brought more households onto the service. Passing one million subscribers shows how effective that formula has been.

Now the pressure is on retention because fair usage policy cuts create a trade-off. Customers get faster connections, but heavy users may reach their data limits sooner and experience throttling. Faiba has an opening here with its unmetered plans, while Zuku has fresh capital to expand and improve its network.

Safaricom has proved it can win broadband customers at scale, but keeping them may require more than speed upgrades and competitive pricing, as rivals offer different combinations of speed, price and data allowances.

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