Kenya coverage

What the Kenya numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 33 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 7 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Kenya when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Safaricom and Airtel. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Kenya

• Safaricom: Safaricom held 69.8 percent of Kenya's 88.0 million mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026, according to the Communications Authority. That was 61.4 million lines, of which 59.6 million were prepaid.
• Safaricom: Vodacom completed the purchase of an additional 20 percent effective stake in Safaricom after the Court of Appeal stayed a conservatory order on 26 June 2026, taking its holding to about 55 percent. The Government of Kenya keeps a 20 percent stake.
• Safaricom: In the year to March 2026 the Communications Authority granted Safaricom a 25 year operating licence under its Unified Licensing Framework, replacing a temporary two year permit. The regulator has traditionally issued 10 year licences.
• Airtel: Airtel Networks Kenya had 23.6 million mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026, a 26.8 percent share of the market, and 31.9 percent of mobile broadband subscriptions, according to the regulator's sector statistics.
• Airtel: Airtel Kenya paid Sh494.2 million plus related fees to extend its operating licence to January 2027, under interim permits issued in late 2024 while the regulator reviewed a move from administrative spectrum allocation to auctions.
• Telkom Kenya: Telkom Kenya had 545,765 mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026, a 0.6 percent share, making it the smallest of the operators the regulator reports on.
• Equitel: Finserve, trading as Equitel, had 1,468,616 mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026, all of them prepaid, which gave it 1.7 percent of the market.
• Jamii Telecom: Jamii Telecommunications had 937,640 mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026, a 1.1 percent share. The regulator notes that Jamii provides data services only.

Older networks in Kenya

• Kenya has no national 2G or 3G switch off date. It is one of 11 countries in a GSMA roadmap aiming to phase out 2G and 3G by 2030, and within the East African Community only Rwanda has launched a phase out programme.
• At the end of June 2026 the regulator still counted 9.3 million 2G and 4.5 million 3G mobile data subscriptions, down from 12.8 million and 7.4 million a year earlier, and 27.4 million feature phones connected to the networks.
• Safaricom was still expanding its older network in the year to March 2025, with its 3G sites rising from 6,823 to 6,970 while 4G sites grew from 6,745 to 6,937.
• Safaricom says phones that already work on its 2G, 3G and 4G networks continue to be supported, and that an existing SIM card works on 5G without a replacement.

5G in Kenya

• Safaricom was granted 60 MHz in the 2600 MHz band in May 2022 and switched on 5G in October 2022, first in Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Kakamega. Airtel Kenya took a further 60 MHz in the same band in July 2022.
• Airtel launched 5G in July 2023 as the second operator to do so, starting with 370 sites across 16 counties and a 5G home broadband product sold with a router.
• By August 2024 Safaricom had 1,114 5G sites covering 102 towns in all 47 counties, reaching 14 percent of the population, with more than 780,000 5G smartphones active on its network.
• Safaricom's 5G network grew from 803 to 1,700 sites in the year to March 2025, covering 30 percent of Kenya's population, while its 2G, 3G and 4G networks together covered more than 97 percent.
• Kenya had 2.1 million 5G mobile data subscriptions at the end of June 2026, up from 1.2 million a year earlier, and 5G users consumed 135.4 million GB in the April to June quarter.
• In the January to March 2026 quarter the average 5G subscription used 53.5 GB, the highest of any technology, against an average of 15.1 GB across all mobile broadband subscriptions.

Network notes for Kenya

• Safaricom offers VoLTE and video over LTE countrywide at no extra cost to customers with a VoLTE capable 4G phone and a 4G SIM, which lets them browse at 4G speed during a call.
• Airtel Kenya introduced VoLTE in May 2023, charged at the same rate as normal calls, so calls on its network can also run over 4G on Android and iOS phones that support it.
• Kenya's international bandwidth arrives on seven undersea cable systems: SEACOM, TEAMS, EASSy, LION 2, DARE 1, PEACE and 2Africa. Lit capacity totalled about 28,950 Gbps in June 2026, while satellite capacity was just 0.33 Gbps.
• In May 2024 a deep sea fibre cut at the Mtunzini teleport station hit the Seacom and EASSy cables serving Kenya. The regulator warned of slow internet for several days and told providers to reroute traffic, while the unaffected TEAMS cable carried local traffic.
• Kenya's broadcasting and telecommunications Principal Secretary said in February 2026 that more than 97 percent of the population is covered by 4G and about 30 percent reached by 5G, while internet use stays below five percent in parts of Marsabit and Mandera.
• The Communications Authority's Universal Service Fund has connected 78 unserved or underserved sub locations to mobile networks in a first phase, targets 101 more in a second, and plans a third phase for 67 further sub locations.
• Mobile penetration reached 165 percent in June 2026, and 97.1 percent of mobile subscriptions were prepaid. Inbound roamers used 763 million MB of data in the April to June quarter, most of it on SIMs from outside the East African Community.