Kenya’s community internet service provider, Poa! internet, has launched the country’s first village home internet service, providing unlimited Wi-Fi into homes in a 48 square km area around Ting’ang’a in Kiambu County. The launch comes as the first of a wave of village connections that will eventually provide millions of rural Kenyans with a cheaper and unlimited alternative to 4G data bundles.
Ting’ang’a, with more than 20,000, residents, sits in a coffee and dairy farming zone, without even a bank branch, although as a peri-urban village, set just 35km outside Nairobi, it has benefitted from new tarmac access roads. The county government is also building an open air market in the village. However, it will be the first Kenyan village to get unlimited home internet.
The ISP is now moving to the second stage of its connectivity strategy, connecting rural villages to unlimited internet, following from its successful launch of affordable internet services in low-income areas of Kibera, Kawangware, Jamhuri and Kabiria. In Nairobi, which have already connected thousands of slum dwellers. Poa’s new home service provides quick installations in the villages it connects, delivering unlimited internet for KES 1,500 per month, which the operator says is less than half the cost of 4G data bundles from other telecom operators in the country.
