Orange finally launches the second 3G mobile data service in Kenya.
Today will go down as a big milestone in Kenya’s mobile broadband history as Orange Kenya officially launched its 3G network this morning. Details including pricing are still sketchy as of this writing but various sources on social media noted that their network will be able to run as fast as 21 Mbps from day one.
This means that Kenya now has its second 3G capable mobile network after the long standing monopoly that Safaricom had for years. It also explains why Safaricom earlier this week launched its 21 Mbps capable dongles in the media since they probably knew of Orange Kenya’s impending 3G launch. All the same its refreshing to see that there is finally a second 3G network to compete with Safaricom and hopefully we will see much better pricing for the services going forward.
What remains to be seen is how Airtel Kenya will respond to Orange Kenya stealing the march on them by launching 3G services earlier on their network. Its a major coup for Orange Kenya and frankly I would finally consider buying an Apple iPhone 4 on their network on this very basis with the good packages they have been offering recently. Meanwhile, let the 3G price wars begin!
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13 Comments
it’s surprising that Kenyan companies are downplaying the role of Internet for publicity & Customer acquisition.
Why would they let news and information about them be broken by bloggers?
I checked Orange Website & I cdn’t see any news of the apparently fab launch of 3G.
Kenyan firms should be internet-centric in order to keep up with Kenyans, given that we’re now spending most of our time here.
Thats good news to the internet users. and as you say, let the 3g price wars begin! i will not immediately consider going for the orange 3g even though i have just seen their competitive bundle prices in the newspapers. I’d rather wait a little longer to see how the 3g competition shapes up.
wow all this sounds great but with the price of the dongle retailing at 6k I think ill wait a little longer to see how this plays down.
I think Orange should pull up there socks.Some areas in Nairobi are still uncovered by 3g.How does the company expect to unseat the safaricom dominance.I hope they will not squander the chance
Ha this is nothing more than Marketing Hype! The service does not exist – I went into the Orange store at Galleria, where they were proudly pushing the new dongle, inviting customers into the store to witness the amazing speed – So I went in and tried a speed test – 21kb/s download speed.
On Edge.
No 3G.
Haha.
#OrangeFail
Has anyone tried using it? I would like to read a review about the speeds before I buy it
I would also be glad to read a review before i buy it.
Anyone who has it?
This is quite a good move-waiting to see what the pricing will be coz this is what will cause the other mobile operators up up their game
I am using the Orange network and since the launch it has not even been 3G once. I am using Opera 9 to post this which shows how long it takes to load a page and all the statistics. It took me more than 8 minutes to fully load this page (@moseskemimbaro.com – as in I have given up counting the time) at 1.7KB/s. Now I have to wait for the CAPTCHA code to be loaded.
NOTE: Brightermonday took 1.20(1 minute, 20 sec.)
Will use Safaricom the next time to compare the results. But, since the reduction in pricing Safaricom is rarely 3G! Also, it keeps on breaking which is characteristic of 3G networks.
Using Orange 3G it took 3.50(3 min, 50 sec) to load this page
This week Orange 3G is better than Safaricons
the 3G signal is weak indoors& i do have the modem suspended up like 3M frm da ground via a 10M USB cable& the signal is 99% with very amazing speeds of upto 10mbps…pricing they dint change anything…AIRTEL PLEASE SAVE US.