Why Access Kenya is going big on broadband, expansion: Kris Senanu Deputy CEO Access Kenya

 

Access Kenya deputy CEO Kris Senamu [PHOTO:Courtesy]

Kris Senanu is crazy about broadband. You can never have enough fibre, he says with a smile, from his sixth floor office where floor to ceiling windows give a close-up view of the late afternoon traffic on Nairobi’s Chiromo Road.

The deputy CEO of Access Kenya, one of the country’s pioneer Internet service providers (ISPs), has a lot to be happy about this year. His company is laying more than Sh500 million worth of fibre, a pet project Mr Senanu is excited to be working on as part of a regional expansion strategy to improve connectivity for East African businesses.

The money will to towards laying 300 kilometres of fibre, and wiring between 150 and 200 buildings across Kenya’s towns and cities.

“We have gone back to our core business, which is providing data solutions to corporate organisations, and we are expanding across the region,” he said.

“We opened an office in Uganda last year and are planning to have a presence in Kigali by June this year, followed by Burundi and South Sudan, preferably by year’s end.”

These are some of the perks that came with the company being bought out by South African firm Dimension Data in a Sh3 billion deal concluded last year.

 Stronger, bolder

“We have always done well financially, but being acquired by Dimension Data now makes us part of a much larger global company,” said Senanu.

Dimension Data brought in the right mix of financial and technical muscle that Access Kenya needed to chart and execute a growth strategy in a highly competitive market.

“We are now a stronger and bolder company, and have more room to diversify our service offering, and it also widens our options for capex [capital expenditure] and internally generated funds for some of the projects we plan to do.”

Demand for Internet connection in Kenya is the largest growing service need in the country’s vibrant telecommunications sector.

Recent data from the country’s ICT regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), shows growth in Internet subscriptions has overtaken mobile money subscriptions and new mobile phone users.

Internet subscriptions grew 5 per cent to reach 14 million users in the last quarter of the 2013-14 financial year.

Broadband subscriptions, including mobile modems and 3G subscriptions, rose to 2.9 million users over the period.

With declining revenues from voice and SMS, data services have emerged as the next battleground in the telecommunications sector.

Senanu, who was born in Ghana but has lived in several countries in Africa and Europe before settling in Kenya more than a decade ago, finds himself against an ominous adversary in the form of Safaricom, the country’s largest mobile service provider.

The telco last year launched an LTE Advanced (4G) network in a move that raised the stakes in the mobile broadband market.

 Sweet deal

Safaricom promises subscribers Internet speeds that are twice as fast as what they currently experience on 3G.

The company further sweetened the deal with the assurance of a wide supply of affordable 4G-enabled devices, including phones, routers and modems, with a Sh9,000 phone planned for launch in the next few months.

But Access Kenya is confident there is room for them in Kenya’s data market.

“There is a lot of business in broadband — both fixed and wireless — and the market we had in 2010 is very different from the market we have today,” he said.

The ISP last year announced it was moving away from providing residential Internet