Earlier this year, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced it was shutting down Loon, a connectivity project that beamed high-speed Internet to underserved areas in Kenya.

The sudden announcement came barely six months after the project was officially launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta with deployments in 14 remote counties. The low-flying balloons (20 kilometres in the stratosphere) were expected to improve high-speed connectivity via 4G and were touted as a game changer in the remote counties.

Coming in the middle of a pandemic, where Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across the board are working to upgrade their capacity to match a spike in demand, at the very least, the success of the project would have raised awareness on what high-speed connectivity contributes to the economy, and it would probably have sown seeds for other ISPs. The cancellation of an infrastructure project of this scale should be a wake-up call to technology policymakers.

Last year, Telkom Kenya said field tests undertaken on the Loon network returned uplink speeds of 4.74 Mbps and downlink speeds of 18.9 Mbps. This translates to a flawless video call and an even better internet experience.

This is not the first government intervention in connectivity – the Universal Service Fund, under the Communications Authority, has been driving the spread of mobile connectivity in the rural, sparsely populated areas that are considered economically unattractive by mobile network operators.

For the USF kitty, the CA collects 0.5 per cent of revenues from telecom service operators annually. Earlier this year, the CA said the fund has hit Sh10 billion and that new infrastructure deployments will be made later this year.

Mobile connectivity

However, the pace of USF rollout is wanting for a digital infrastructure kitty of its magnitude and responsibility. Despite the USF being set up in 2013, it was not until 2016 that the first tenders were awarded, and the second ones advertised last year.

At the same time, reports that some Tier 1 service providers have been lagging behind in their annual contributions to the kitty raises questions about the longevity of the project.

If mobile connectivity has taken this long, how about fibre connectivity to the rural areas? Covid-19 has shown us that Internet connectivity is no longer a luxury but a basic necessity.

The government, in partnership with the private sector, should ramp up investments in connectivity and widen the reach of the national fibre backbone. The ICT Ministry has already set a precedent with Konza City’s data centre, but more investment is needed.

For now, commercial viability remains a major issue. Many telcos see rural areas as high-cost, low-return investments, which explains the lag in deployments.

It is time for a different approach to infrastructure. The Communications Authority should start considering mandatory co-location, where all ISPs are required to share towers, ducts, and other critical infrastructure, instead of each investing in its own.

Currently, you have to promise investors a return on investment for them to put their money in infrastructure. However, if ISPs shared infrastructure, the cost of entry would be lower, and more providers would be encouraged to expand their coverage.