The Riddle of 4G and the Kenyan Market

When I got my Galaxy Note 2 a while back, I was fascinated by every aspect of it (Why else buy a phone unless it’s everything you desire right?). I did notice one thing though, this feature of LTE (Long term Evolution for those who aren’t that conversant with all things Telecoms) and I kept wondering, when will I ever get to use this feature. It felt like having a Ferrari you couldn’t race, I mean “what the hell” right?

So this got me interested in this nextgen network of 4G/LTE (It is to be noted that even as we seek to move to 4G South Korea are looking to 5G, sucks to be us). I was able to find information that dates back to last year and it looks grim in my opinion. A project bogged by controversy and operators who seem that they might not last long enough to see the race to the end (Essar AKA Yu comes to mind).There is also the case that Huawei will be involved in the implementation of the system even though they had tried for the tender a few years back and lost (talk about playing your cards right). The government seeks to implement a shared spectrum after the planned migration of TV from analogue to digital (another stalled and poorly planned project) later on in 2015.

Now the big question here is will we ever get to see this 4G network? Recently Safaricom was contracted to implement the country’s security system and part of this agreement was that they would be able to get a licence at about 6.5 billion for access to the spectrum (crafty guys). The catch is, this is a tentative figure and it could happen that they might over pay subject to which CCK will do no refunds(trust government to give such a statement).

That’s as close as any company has gotten to obtaining a license to migrate to the holy grail of the ever elusive 4G network. Though in all fairness, a shared network would work to benefit the struggling competitors (no offense) as opposed to everyone going at it on their own because we all know how that will turn out. But there have been discerning voices arguing for the sake of Safaricom in that the migration would give them a more competitive edge on a continental scale but that remains to be seen since I haven’t seen them make moves to venture into the larger continent that is Africa. just SayinG