Kenyan ISP grows its bandwidth by 150% in one year

Nairobi – This purchase of new international bandwidth will make the ISP the only one in Kenya with 250Mbps. In addition, it announced that it is in the process of finalising contracts for additional capacity for the first quarter of next year to ensure that they have significant capacity for their projected future growth. With the additional bandwidth, the ISP's clients will now have enhanced connectivity.

“To have grown our bandwidth from around 100Mbps in January to 250Mbps before the year end is a real tribute to the hard work and dedication to our whole team to deliver to Kenyan consumers the best possible Internet services at the best possible prices backed up with world class support. The additional bandwidth will also further enhance our competitiveness by taking advantage of more economies of scale,” said Jonathan Somen, the group's MD.

The group had previously been granted their own Data Carrier Network Operator License (DCNO). It essentially allows them to be in total control of the entire “end to end” network from the clients' networks to the public internet and it permits them to directly purchase the bandwidth from overseas satellite bandwidth providers and directly deliver it to clients over the network.

Somen said AccessKenya was dedicated to striving for added value in terms of speed and cost at every level for its customers.

With deregulation, the group took advantage of new licences to build infrastructure and expand services and with their market-leading Broadband MAX solution, they have been at the forefront of offering corporate clients ‘more for less' by driving down the price of Internet to consumers. “The enormous uptake of primarily our Broadband MAX2 quadruple downlink solution as well as our other services has fuelled our bandwidth growth and we believe has pushed us further ahead of our competitors in terms of both market share and also the speed of connection our customers enjoy. In addition and more specifically, our three uplinks and three downlinks now in place provide unmatched redundancy in Kenya which clearly sets us apart from all our competitors,” he said.

AccessKenya is Kenya's only publicly listed ICT Company. It comprises AccessKenya, Broadband Access (BLUE), and now Openview Business Systems. The group currently has over 1850 corporate leased lines across Kenya, employs in excess of 200 people and has offices in Nairobi and Mombasa with representation in both Kisumu and Nyeri.

The group has also grown on average by 75% per year, for the last three years and it has numerous partnerships including Cisco (Premier Partner), Motorola, IBM (Premier Business Partner), Oracle and Net App Gold Partner.

Key products include Yello, GO, Broadband Max 2 and Bundu as well as numerous value-added services including web hosting, collocation, disaster recovery, antivirus, anti-spam, managed services, networking, software and IT services solutions.

Companies within the group currently hold four licenses from CCK including DCNO, ISP, PDNO, and Local Loop Operator licenses.