Safaricom intends to increase the number of 5G sites by up to 17 times by the end of the year. This is with the main aim of spreading the coverage of this superfast network and making it available to more subscribers in various urban centres.

According to Safaricom, the network that was launched in the country back in March with 15 sites will be made available in up to 250 sites taking it to nine towns.

As expected, the expansion of the 5G network across the country will arm more people and organizations with incredibly fast internet to be used for work and entertainment. This will also help Safaricom in its goal of raising internet use in the country.

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Safaricom’s Chief Finance Officer Dilip Pal confirmed this saying that the project has been catered for in the telco’s spending plans.

“When we started, we had about 15 sites where we have had the signal as we speak. This is expected to go up to about 100-250 sites by the end of the year,” said Mr Pal.

The 5G network was initially launched in various urban centres including Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii and Kakamega. However, the launch was seen as more of a test and not many have been able to benefit from the network that’s expected to change everything.

Additionally, the network’s setup is not cheap at all and the firm will be expected to dig deep in order to ensure coverage spread widely. Safaricom still insists that the tech will be on a trial basis and will not take up a huge part of its capital expenditure for now.

We are also expecting Airtel Kenya to offer some competition with its own 5G network that is yet to be launched but is said to be in the works.

The firm recently upgraded 600 network sites to meet the network’s capabilities. This is as Airtel plans to initially roll out the service in Nairobi, Malindi and Mombasa.