OUR NETWORK

Our network is essential to the continuity and sustainability of our business. It is the foundation of all our operations, delivering our services and enabling us to transform lives. The quality, coverage and availability of our network are paramount to our competitive advantage, allowing us to differentiate ourselves in this highly competitive industry.

NETWORK QUALITY

We maintained our fi rst-place position in all voice service categories and achieved fi rst place in all categories for data service as per P3 certifi cation, evaluated by P3 Communications (www.p3-group.com), an independent company. This was thanks to continuous network optimisation efforts, capacity expansion, implementation of network enhancement features and expansion of the fi bre network, which offers improved capacity and reliability.

These seven KPIs are a simplified illustration of the full scope measured for the P3 Certification Benchmark criteria. For the purposes of this report, we have ranked ourselves against the other mobile operators in Kenya. The comprehensive P3 Certification Benchmark criteria comprises an extensive set of 29 KPIs for big cities, small cities and interconnecting highways, with each KPI having an individual score. The full set of P3 certification results can be obtained from the P3 website.

While the above shows that network unavailability rate (NUR) and service unavailability rate (SUR) have increased, this rise is due to new energy saving measures, such as removal of generators and some sites being configured to switch off when no traffic is detected. These affected NUR/SUR but not customer experience.

3G and 4G networks consume more power than 2G, so naturally our energy consumption would be expected to increase as we rolled out these technologies to more sites throughout the country.

We measure our performance against this metric using the customer opinion-driven Net Promoter Score (NPS), an independent survey of customer satisfaction. While NPS is a useful indicator, it is important to note that it measures customer opinions regarding network performance, not actual network performance.

The network NPS metric allows us to monitor how our customers are experiencing our improvements to the network. The network achieved its best-ever NPS of 80, putting us in front of the field, 16 points ahead of our nearest competitor.

Despite achieving high NPS scores,we believe there is still more room for improvement opportunities to optimise the quality of network in different parts of the country.

NETWORK EXPANSION

In the year under review, we focused on expanding broadband coverage to bring data network coverage to more Kenyans. This involved increased roll out of 3G and 4G sites as well as FTTH (fibre to the home) service to more households.

We focused on migrating sites from microwave to fibre, increasing transmission capacity and improving customers’ network experience through better, more reliable data speeds and mobile voice connectivity. Our aggressive expansion of the fi bre optic network has enabled us to surpass all of our FY19 fibre-related targets (FTTH and FTTB sites).

“The network achieved its bestever NPS of 80, putting us in front of the fi eld, 16 points ahead of our nearest competitor.”

OUR FIBRE OPTIC FOOTPRINT

We continuously support small office/home office (SOHO) and small and medium enterprise (SME) businesses to promote economic inclusion and reduce income inequality, enabling entrepreneurs to make digital enhancements to their businesses and thus improve their livelihoods.

By the end of FY19 we had connected 107,762 residential homes to fibre, offering an opportunity to local innovators to get access to a larger digital home market. Virtually all jobs in the future will have a digital component, so the workforce must be prepared. We are able to offer digital solutions to support flexible working patterns that promote innovation and reduce operational costs.

Strategic partnerships with Kenya Power and Liquid Telecom involved leasing infrastructure to enable us to run fibre optic cable over electrical and telephone lines to residential households, rather than placing them underground. This allowed us to reach more homes than ever before – with an increase of 60% in the number of homes connected.

The number of enterprise buildings passed for the preceding years has been restated due to improved data monitoring and reporting process.

TECH 3.0: FIT FOR THE FUTURE

In the year under review we prioritised technological advancement on our network, focusing on the digitisation of operations and enhancing the digital experience for our customers by using performance monitoring and data driven insights to improve our network.

Smart planning uses data from network KPIs, call data records and crowdsourcing tools to aid network expansion, ensure optimal customer experience and maximise revenues. Smart planning technology informed the planning of 4G site rollouts across the country and improvements to 3G coverage over a densely populated area within Nairobi.

BUILDING SKILLS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

We revised our organisational structure to better deliver digital transformation, relying on over eight weeks of analysis, input and design consultations to develop an operating model that will facilitate this transformation.

In service of our Tech 3.0 digital transformation, our workforce has had to follow suit, upgrading to become a world-class team. Beginning in 2019, 60 members of staff attended our Digital Academy, undergoing six months of full-time digital skills training at Strathmore University.
The key areas of focus for Tech 3.0 are:

analytics and automation
application programming interfaces (APIs) in networks and IT
embedding customer security in our products and technologies
fostering a data-driven and innovative collaborative culture

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2020

We plan to focus on the following:

Increase the frequency of transmission capacity;
4G and 4G+ acceleration (rollout of more 4G sites);
Activation of innovative features such as VoLTE (voice over longterm evolution) and VoBB (voice over broadband);
Forging ahead towards becoming a digital services company, using data insights to further delight our customers through revamped customer experience tools and crowdsourced data to gather better insights;
Monitoring new services recently rolled out, such as FTTH and fixed LTE.