Kenya's Communications Authority (CA) has significantly increased satellite operator licensing fees, replacing the old Satellite Landing Rights (SLR) licence with the more expensive International Gateway Systems and Services (IGSS) licence.

• Licensing fees now range from KES 15 million for 15 years to KES 45 million for 25 years, a substantial jump from the previous $12,500 (KES 1.6 million).
• This affects major players including SpaceX's Starlink, MultiChoice, and global operators like Eutelsat and SES.
• The new regulations also introduce a separate Landing Rights Authorisation (LRA) licence costing $25,000, with annual operating fees starting at KES 4 million.

Airtel is steadily gaining ground in Kenya's mobile voice call market, chipping away at Safaricom's dominant share throughout 2025. While Safaricom remains the market leader, its share of domestic voice traffic has seen a slight decline.

• Airtel grew its voice traffic by approximately 13.3% in 2025, surpassing Safaricom's growth of about 7.1%.
• The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) reports show Airtel's share of domestic voice traffic increased from 36.1% to 37.6%, while Safaricom's fell from 63.4% to 62.2%.
• Airtel also consistently recorded longer average on-net call durations than Safaricom throughout the year, indicating deeper user engagement.

Kenya's Communications Authority (CA) has released its latest mobile network quality report for FY 2024-2025, ranking Safaricom first, followed by Airtel and Telkom. However, the report is criticized for its omission of crucial testing for modern mobile usage.

• The report fails to assess key indicators like jitter and packet loss, which are critical for video streaming and online gaming, due to the exclusion of these specific tests.
• The existing Quality of Service (QoS) framework was established in 2017 and does not adequately reflect current mobile user behavior, which heavily involves streaming, video calls, and gaming.
• This omission leaves consumers with an incomplete picture of network performance for the most sensitive and growing categories of mobile usage, despite the report acknowledging the importance of these metrics.