Zuku, Wananchi Group’s home entertainment and communication services brand, has begun a KES 220 million (US$2.5 million) network upgrade as it looks to offer improved speeds and reduced downtime as it expands its services in East Africa.

The company said the upgrade is expected to be complete by the end of October, with Nairobi customers provided with speeds of up to 50Mbps.

The latest quarterly statistics from the Communications Authority of Kenya showed Wananchi Group’s market-leading share in the fixed/wireless internet subscriptions market grew by 1.7 percentage points between January and March this year, to stand at 44.7%.

Meanwhile, the company has been rolling out or improving a number of its services, modernising its network infrastructure in May, revitalising its voice telephony services, and launching Zuku TV in Malawi.

“Over the last two years we have had an unprecedented growth in our customer numbers, hence the need to provision more capacity in the network to accommodate the growth. This upgrade will ensure that we offer improved quality of service, to existing and new customers,” said Richard Alden, chief executive officer (CEO) of Wananchi Group.

“The work required to put the necessary infrastructure in place began earlier this year and is due to end in October. The upgrade will focus on increasing network access capacity for the end user; new voice architecture so as to provide cutting edge telephony services and increase national backbone capacity.”

Alden said Zuku used Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial (HFC) and Fibre to the Home (FTTH) technology to serve its Nairobi customers, and would continue to invest in those technologies and others to maintain its market lead.