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Safaricom actions regional FTTH roll out plan

By , ITWeb
Kenya , 11 Oct 2017

Safaricom actions regional FTTH roll out plan

Kenyan telecommunications services provider Safaricom has initiated its Fibre to the Home (FTTH) regional rollout plan.

Steve Okeyo, regional sales and operations director at Safaricom says customer insights reveal that access to internet in the home has become increasingly critical.

"This for us presents a huge opportunity. Our plan is to ensure that every customer that needs fibre connectivity at their homes across the country can access it affordably and at zero installation cost."

The telco says it currently has 95 000 homes connected to its fibre infrastructure and hopes to increase its customer base.

Safaricom says the first phase of the rollout will start with Kitengela town and its environs, targeting 14 000 homes with a plan to reach 40% penetration within the next three months.

"Other towns that are targeted in this phase include Athi River, Buruburu, Ngong Road, Runda, Ruaka, and Karen," the company states.

Upon registration, customers will be given a router and access to credentials that will enable them to have both Wireless and LAN access, with no installation charges.

Recently, Huawei announced the rollout of new solutions aimed at the internet sector in South Africa and Kenya with the objective to boost internet penetration. The company revealed that it is working with Safaricom to deploy an FTTH network.

Huawei said Safaricom had adopted its end-to-end (E2E) FTTH solution for rapid deployment of the FTTH network and expansion of its capability to new home broadband services.

Thibuad Rerolle, CTO at Safaricom said the mobile operator's growth plans into the home and enterprise fixed broadband market will benefit from E2E FTTH solution. "By using Huawei's E2E FTTH solution, we can quickly build the FTTH network. We are keen to broaden the development space for new fixed broadband services."

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