Costly 5G mobile phones have slowed down Safaricom’s expansion of superfast fifth-generation network and sites.
Safaricom reckons that it will require a critical mass of handsets before a significant increase in 5G sites targeted at retail consumers.
The telecom operator is now targeting homes and offices in areas which are not currently covered by its fibre network with the high-speed internet platform as it seeks to capitalise on burgeoning mobile internet use in the country.
“Until handsets that can receive 5G are at a sufficient scale from an individual mobile perspective there isn’t a big need to have lots of sites that offer 5G,” Safaricom chief executive Peter Ndegwa told Business Daily in an interview.
“5G-enabled devices are still very expensive and that’s one of the reasons why we are focusing more on the 4G side and leaving 5G to serve the homes versus your mobile internet,” he said.
Currently, 5G phones in the Kenyan market are few and expensive with the handsets retailing at more than Sh100,000(US$859.80).
