41 / 84
Safaricom Sustainability Report 2016
41
We failed to hit our target of 3,811 2G-enabled base stations due to challenges in the acquisition of new site locations,
especially in insecure locations within the country. While the expansion of our 3G-enabled sites remains on track, we
reviewed our plans and did not roll out the conventional 2100 MHz sites we had included, choosing to focus on the UMTS
900-enabled sites instead. This was strategic because UMTS900 3G sites offer better coverage than conventional 2100MHz
3G sites and enable us to provide a larger population coverage with the deployment of each new 3G site. We achieved
our target of 463 4G-enabled sites (the target was revised from 467 to 463 during the year) as this process does not require
the acquisition of news sites, but simply the installation of new technologies on existing towers.
Fibre optic network growing steadily
Our fibre optic network is strategically important to us because this type of broadband connectivity offers extremely
fast data speeds and high resilience. Last year, we committed to expanding our fibre footprint to a further 10 towns and
connecting all 1,020 targeted enterprise buildings and 8,000 residential homes in 50 housing estates.
CHANGE IN NO. OF BASE STATIONS BY TYPE: FY14 TO FY16
FY14
FY15
FY16
3,140
2,517
463
1,580
1,943
2G-enabled
3G-enabled
4G-enabled
UMTS 900-enabled
236
543
1,847
-
100
3,382
3,800
FY16
FY15
progress to date at FY14
6,848
4,060
5,060
720
183
30% 25% 34%
1,018
Footprint
(kilometers)
Enterprise Buildings
connected
Residential Homes
connected
Sites (BTS)
connected (%)
872 km
2,010 km
3,236 km