I have been covering nPerf’s annual barometer of fixed internet connections in Kenya since September 2022, when I first wrote about their findings covering the period from July 2021 to June 2022. That first report landed in my inbox and immediately struck me as one of the most useful pieces of independent data available on Kenya’s broadband market — not because it confirmed what operators were telling us in their own press releases, but precisely because it did not. 

It was built on real user behaviour, on hundreds of thousands of actual speed tests conducted by actual Kenyan consumers on their actual connections, aggregated and analysed by an independent performance measurement platform with no commercial stake in who came first. In a market where every ISP’s marketing materials describe their offering as fast, reliable, and affordable, data like this cuts through the noise in a way that no sponsored content or operator-commissioned study ever can.

Four years on, I have now covered four consecutive nPerf barometer cycles for Kenya’s fixed-line market. The latest press release arrived in my inbox yesterday, covering the period from April 2025 to March 2026, and it contains some of the most striking performance numbers I have seen in this series. Taken in isolation, those numbers are interesting. 

Taken together with the three preceding years of data, they tell a coherent and genuinely compelling story about the structural trajectory of Kenya’s fixed broadband market — who is winning, who is struggling, who has disappeared, who has arrived, and what all of it means for the millions of Kenyan homes and businesses that depend on fixed internet connectivity.

Why nPerf’s Data Deserves Your Attention

Before diving into the numbers, it is worth explaining exactly what makes this dataset worth taking seriously. nPerf is an independent French platform that has been measuring internet performance globally for over a decade. 

Its methodology is straightforward: users run speed tests through the nPerf website or mobile app, and those tests — measuring download bitrate, upload bitrate, latency, web browsing performance, and streaming quality — are aggregated across operators, filtered to remove automated probes and measurement robots, and analysed separately for busy hours (6pm to 11pm) and idle hours, giving a more honest picture of real-world network performance under load. 

The 2025–2026 Kenya report included operators with a test share above five per cent of total tests, ensuring that only providers with meaningful consumer footprints are ranked. Safaricom accounted for 41 per cent of all tests, Faiba for 12 per cent, VGG Connect for 22 per cent, Airtel for 18 per cent, and Zuku for 7 per cent. The result is a picture of Kenya’s fixed broadband market as consumers actually experience it, not as operators present it.

The Four-Year Picture: How Kenya’s Fixed Broadband Rankings Have Evolved

When nPerf published their first Kenya fixed-line barometer covering the period July 2021 to June 2022, the market looked substantially different from today. The competitive field at that point comprised Faiba, Safaricom, Zuku, Telkom Kenya, and Mawingu. Faiba was already the leader, posting download speeds of 41 Mb/s and upload speeds of 25 Mb/s, with latency of 29 ms — comfortably ahead of Safaricom at 21 Mb/s download and 43 ms latency, Zuku at 23 Mb/s download, Telkom Kenya at 16 Mb/s download, and Mawingu at 10 Mb/s download. The competitive scenario of that market was essentially a two-tier affair: Faiba leading clearly, with Safaricom and Zuku forming a credible second tier, and Telkom and Mawingu a distant third.

By the time I covered nPerf’s April 2023 to March 2024 barometer a year later, Faiba retained its top position overall, with the fastest web browsing performance at 38 per cent efficiency and the strongest composite score. Safaricom delivered the best streaming quality at 74.5 per cent and competitive download speeds. Zuku and Mawingu delivered the best latency in that cycle, at 39 ms and 41 ms respectively. Telkom Kenya still featured but was already showing signs of the decline that would eventually see it exit the rankings entirely.

The April 2024 to March 2025 barometer, which nPerf published in April 2025, confirmed the consolidation of Faiba’s lead. With an overall nPerf score of 53,975 nPoints, Faiba finished first with download speeds of 33.11 Mb/s, upload of 29.68 Mb/s, and browsing performance of 39.30 per cent. Safaricom followed at 51,709 nPoints with download speeds of 29.00 Mb/s and notably the best streaming performance at 72.07 per cent. Zuku came third at 51,394 nPoints with the best latency in the field at 41.80 ms and download speeds of 25.44 Mb/s. Mawingu remained a distant fourth at 24,430 nPoints. Telkom Kenya had by this point disappeared from the rankings entirely — a remarkably swift exit for what was once one of Kenya’s three major telecoms operators, and a signal of the deeper institutional difficulties that have beset them. The market had effectively consolidated from five meaningful operators to four, and a new competitive structure was taking shape.

2025–2026: The Year Faiba Broke Away From The Pack

The April 2025 to March 2026 barometer is where the story becomes genuinely remarkable. Faiba’s overall nPerf score of 67,150 nPoints represents a 24.4 per cent improvement on its own score from the previous year — itself already a market-leading result. More dramatically, its download speed of 62.68 Mb/s represents a 89 per cent increase year-on-year from 33.11 Mb/s. That is not incremental improvement. That is a doubling of effective download performance in a single twelve-month cycle, achieved at a time when every other operator in the market was also improving. Faiba also leads in upload speed at 44.42 Mb/s, web browsing performance at 44.78 per cent, and YouTube streaming quality at 69.47 per cent. In the WiFi category, Faiba’s dominance is equally comprehensive, with an nPerf score of 65,204 nPoints against VGG Connect’s 56,390, Safaricom’s 55,014, Zuku’s 44,981, and Airtel’s 32,167.

The 2025–2026 rankings also feature two operators not present in the previous cycle’s top five: VGG Connect and Airtel. VGG Connect’s appearance at second place overall — with a score of 59,321 nPoints — is a significant competitive development. Its defining characteristic is latency, where it has recorded the best result in the sector for the fifth consecutive year, this time at 14.20 ms — a 23 per cent improvement from its already impressive 18.36 ms the previous year. 

For context, 14.20 ms is an exceptionally low latency figure for a fixed broadband network in any market, let alone an East African one. VGG Connect’s download speed of 21.36 Mb/s and upload of 21.49 Mb/s rank lower in the field, but for applications where responsiveness matters more than raw throughput — video conferencing, online gaming, real-time collaboration, trading platforms — a 14.20 ms latency is a genuinely differentiating technical advantage.

Safaricom completes the podium at third place with 55,978 nPoints, up from 51,709 the previous year. Its upload speed improved 25 per cent year-on-year to 26.82 Mb/s, and its streaming performance at 67.95 per cent remains competitive. But the honest analytical observation here is that Safaricom’s fixed-line offering, while improving consistently over four years, has never been the market leader in this dataset and shows no signs of closing the gap with Faiba in any meaningful timeframe. 

Safaricom’s fixed broadband market share of 34.9 per cent — as reported in Communications Authority data — gives it the largest subscriber base in the fixed segment, but subscriber count and performance leadership are clearly not the same thing in this market. Safaricom’s fixed internet strength lies in its distribution, its brand, its bundled Safaricom mobile plans, and its extensive fibre footprint. On pure performance metrics, Faiba and now VGG Connect have established leads that the numbers do not yet show Safaricom closing.

Zuku holds fourth position at 53,181 nPoints, posting a download speed improvement of 39 per cent year-on-year to 35.35 Mb/s — its strongest individual metric in this cycle. Upload at 30.02 Mb/s and latency at 42.14 ms round out a balanced if unspectacular profile. Zuku’s consistent five-year score improvement is a credit to steady network investment, but it finds itself in a market where the top two — Faiba and VGG Connect — are now pulling away in ways that require more than incremental infrastructure upgrades to match.

Airtel closes the 2025–2026 rankings at fifth with 41,438 nPoints, up from 36,022 the previous year. The standout data point for Airtel this cycle is a 61 per cent year-on-year improvement in upload speed to 22.56 Mb/s — the most dramatic upload gain of any operator in the field. That is a real signal of infrastructure investment in the upload path, which has historically been the weaker dimension of fixed broadband networks in Kenya. Airtel’s latency at 50.15 ms remains the highest in the market and will need sustained attention, but the upload story is genuinely encouraging.

What Four Years Of Data Tells Us About Kenya’s Fixed Broadband Market

Reading across all four nPerf barometer cycles, several structural patterns emerge that go beyond the annual rankings.

Faiba’s dominance has been consistent, not accidental. It has led Kenya’s fixed-line rankings in every single nPerf barometer cycle covered in this series — from 2021–2022 through to 2025–2026. What is striking is not just that Faiba leads, but that it is improving at a rate that suggests serious ongoing infrastructure investment rather than coasting on an existing advantage. An 89 per cent download speed improvement in a single year, when you are already the market leader, is the kind of number that speaks to architectural decisions — network capacity expansion, technology upgrades, or fibre densification — rather than routine maintenance. The gap between Faiba and the rest of the market is now wider than it has been at any point in this four-year series, and the trajectory suggests it will continue to widen unless competitors make equivalent infrastructure commitments.

The market structure has shifted significantly. In 2021–2022, five operators featured in the rankings. Telkom Kenya has since disappeared entirely — a collapse that mirrors the company’s broader commercial difficulties and the regulatory uncertainties that have surrounded it. In their place, VGG Connect has emerged as a credible second-place operator on the strength of five consecutive years of best-in-class latency performance. Airtel’s entry into the fixed-line rankings reflects its growing investment in home broadband, even if its overall performance still has considerable ground to cover. The net effect is a market that has not simply evolved incrementally but has been structurally reconstituted — different players, different competitive dynamics, and a more technically sophisticated consumer base making more informed choices.

Safaricom’s position in fixed broadband deserves honest examination. The company is Kenya’s largest fixed broadband provider by subscription count, with 798,900 homes passed and 432,400 fixed service customers as of HY26. Its nPerf score has improved every year in this series. But it has never topped the rankings, and in the 2025–2026 cycle it sits third — behind not just the long-established Faiba but also behind VGG Connect, an operator that most Kenyan consumers would not immediately name as a Safaricom rival. 

For a company with Safaricom’s resources, brand equity, and fibre footprint, a third-place finish in independent performance rankings is a data point worth sitting with. Safaricom’s fixed internet offering is competitive in streaming quality and increasingly solid in upload speeds, but it has not yet established performance leadership in the segment it dominates commercially — and that asymmetry is one of the more interesting tensions in Kenya’s broadband market.

The overall pitcure for the entire sector is unambiguously positive. Every operator in the 2025–2026 barometer improved its nPerf score year-on-year. Download speeds have risen across the entire market. Faiba’s 89 per cent download improvement is the headline, but Zuku’s 39 per cent improvement and Airtel’s 61 per cent upload improvement are also meaningful. This is a sector that is genuinely investing in its infrastructure, not managing a declining asset. For Kenyan consumers, the practical implication is straightforward: fixed broadband in Kenya in 2026 is faster, more reliable, and more competitive than it has been at any point in this four-year measurement window.

Where This Market Goes Next

The central question that four years of nPerf data raises for Kenya’s fixed broadband market is whether any of Faiba’s challengers can close the performance gap that has opened up in the 2025–2026 cycle. 

VGG Connect’s latency leadership is a genuine technical differentiator for specific use cases, but its throughput metrics need to improve substantially if it is to threaten Faiba’s overall dominance. 

Safaricom’s fibre rollout — which has reached 798,900 homes passed and is continuing to expand — creates the infrastructure prerequisite for performance improvement, but the nPerf data suggests that infrastructure availability and nPerf performance ranking are not the same thing. 

Zuku’s download momentum is encouraging, but it needs to sustain that trajectory and replicate it in upload and latency to break into the podium ahead of Safaricom. 

Airtel’s upload recovery is the most interesting development in the 2025–2026 cycle for the longer term — if it can address its latency weakness with the same energy it has applied to upload, it could become a genuinely competitive fixed broadband player within the next reporting cycle.

I have covered this data series since its first Kenya edition landed in my inbox on a September afternoon in 2022. What I find most valuable about the nPerf barometer is not any single year’s rankings, but the cumulative picture that emerges when you read four years of data side by side. Markets do not change overnight. Competitive advantages are built through sustained investment and strategic consistency, not through announcements. 

The four-year nPerf dataset is one of the clearest available illustrations of that principle in Kenya’s digital economy — and the 2025–2026 results are, by some distance, the most dramatic chapter in the story so far. Faiba has not just won this year’s rankings. It has established itself, with four consecutive victories and an accelerating performance margin, as the undisputed benchmark for fixed broadband quality in Kenya. Everyone else in this market needs to decide what they are going to do about that.