Kenya Fiber To The Home (FTTH) Internet Packages Interactive Infographic
During this past weekend I attended the 2017 edition of the Kenya Homes Expo for a couple of hours and I noticed that both Safaricom and Zuku had stands there promoting their Fiber To The Home (FTTH) Internet packages.This was interesting given that the event basically targets anyone and everyone who is a stakeholder in the home real estate market and the Internet has indeed become one of the essentials in the urban Kenyan home – alongside utilities like water and electricity.
The big draw of FTTH Internet offerings is that they are fast, unlimited, and relatively(?) affordable compared to using mobile data bundles which can become quite expensive on a monthly basis. FTTH Internet is basically a no-brainer!
My main interest in doing this blog post is similar to one I did almost 9 years ago where I compared various home Internet packages in Kenya. Back then, wireless technologies like WIMAX were all the rage but this has since changed as the majority of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Kenya now use fiber – which is much faster and quite often more reliable Internet connectivity.
I wanted to aggregate all the different FTTH Internet packages in Kenya from all the major players, currently being Safaricom, Zuku, JTL’s Faiba and Liquid Telcom’s HAI to see how they all stack up it terms of pricing and bandwidth. However, the ideal scenario would be to run speed tests concurrently to see how each one performs as well. I did this a few years ago with Zuku and JTL’s Faiba as blogged here but have not had an opportunity (yet?) to take this further.
In presenting the aggregated FTTH Internet data across the ISPs, rather than using a table, I created the below interactive infographic which gives a dynamic representation of the rates and bandwidth packages on offer. The infographic does NOT say which one is better than the other as that can only be ascertained once you try them out? That being said, I hope you find it useful in that all the FTTH Internet pricing and bandwidth information is accurate as of this writing:
The Author
9 Comments
Hi Moses thank you again for your very useful analysis. But i’my confused with the comparison graphic on the fiber to the home packages. It’s a good visual summary but hard to interpret especially along the Y axis. I assume that’s the cost per month while X is the bandwidth? However interpretation is hard – are we to read the top of the column as an absolute figure? Or is it proportional according to size of band of colored Column? So pricing is different per provider? This then makes the graphic hard to compare. Take the 4th column for example of 20 Mbps. What is it saying? That the price is 29K? Or if proportionate to the colored bands that the providers are so disparate in pricing this 20Mbps band? Or has the Y axis numbers gotten mixed up with number of customers? Could you kindly relook at the graphic I’d really appreciate because your analysis saves us a lot of time and as part of an estate considering FTTH it’s very helpful. Asante sana – Raphael
@raphael thanks for your message. You can click or tap each graph element to give you more information on pricing and the relevant vendor. In addition, you can filter the graphs to show options by service provider by click on the dots for each service provider at the bottom. I tried many variations and this was the most intuitive format I could find. Hope this feedback helps.
Ah! Brilliant – as always : ) will do shukran
No problem.
Hi Moses,
Do you have the inside scoop on whether or not Zuku has upped their infrastructure game since your last post on the subject a few years back?
https://moseskemibaro.com/2014/07/24/speed-test-zuku-8mbps-vs-faiba-5mbps/
Bests,
-B
@BMan hard to say? People still complain a lot online if you look at their social media. What I do know is that there are areas where Zuku seems to work really well and others where it does not.
I wonder if any fiber company has services in Mwiki area.
Hello Moses. I am really grateful for your insightful posts. Both this one and the one from 2014. I have been wondering for the past month why I should pay for Faiba with its installation being 15000 in my area plus 5000 per month. The saving process has been filled with doubts especially with other ISP’s boasting cheaper installation and cheaper rates. I was told about the reliability of faiba but in a way, your words have sealed the deal. Not alot of people write online articles relating to things in Nairobi let alone wifi, so I this article has saved me. Thanks
Happy to help 🙂