CA quarterly reports on internet access deeply flawed, study says

By Steve UMIDHA

For years, estimates about the correct number of Kenyans connected to the internet may have been based on flawed and unreliable data, a new study suggests.

The latest Digital Rights and Inclusion Annual Report 2022 by Paradigm Initiative fingers the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) saying the authority’s analysis on internet access among Kenyans, have been wrong and inconsistent and do not reflect the country’s true position.

“Reports from CAK on internet users contain figures that tend to be flawed or inaccurate and the methodology adopted in arriving at the figures has been questioned a number of times,” noted the report.

Report’s authors further revealed ‘serious failings’ on the part of the professional body, CA, suggesting that its quarterly figures do not draw a parallel with those statistics from bodies like the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), GSMA and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – putting the Government at risk and denying it crucial information in “formulating practical strategies around connectivity.”

“The lack of information on the state of internet connectivity in the country leaves a gap in terms of evidence-based facts that the government can rely on in formulating policies and strategies on internet connection,” read the study, released last Friday.

Most Kenyan households are today connected to home fiber which provide fastest speeds with low latencies, with the debate on affordable internet often coming to play.

In fact a separate study by British technology research firm Cable in its report titled Worldwide Mobile Data Pricing 2021, found that Kenyans were paying twice as much for mobile internet, coughing up to Sh244 per every one gigabyte of mobile data, compared to Sh112 in 2020, on average.

In three months to March 2022, for instance, CA figures shows that mobile or SIM card and internet subscriptions rose significantly during the coverage period to 65.5 million and 48.3 million respectively, while mobile broadband subscriptions of 3G and 4G networks also saw a significant increase during the period with an estimated 30.9 million Kenyans connected to the internet.

Similarly, the total mobile data or internet subscriptions stood at 47.7 million in three months to December 2022, out of which 66.8 percent were on mobile broadband.

CA figures also show that the annual report on the internet subscriptions for the financial year 2020-2021 rose to 46.7 million, which would ideally mean that the country was making progress towards internet penetration.

However, the Paradigm Initiative study, also referred to as LONDA, defers, saying that the exact number of internet users in the country may be vague and shadowy.

“There are no statistics on the number of people currently using the internet. Reports from CA on internet users contain figures which do not reflect the correct position in the country,” decries the survey.

It now puts the ICT watchdog at an obstinate limelight.

In 2019, the authority reported that there were 97 per cent internet users in Kenya, while in 2017 it also reported that internet penetration in the country had reached 112 per cent, meaning the country had 51.1 million internet users which the survey says is unrealistic given that the country’s population at the time was 45 million.

This means, CA counted one internet user for every mobile data subscription instead of counting individual internet users, according to the report, which said such a method was bound to produce incorrect and distorted figures because individuals can have “multiple devices with multiple SIM cards.”

It has now urged the country’s ICT regulator to work on providing accurate data and statistics on internet use and access in the country by tapping shared expertise from the private sector and civil organizations, in order to avert the supposed puny and overly-optimistic evidence from its studies.

In doing this, the survey drafters are calling on the regulator to “drop the methodology applied in enumerating the number of internet users in the country, and the statistics provided by telcos on internet use.”

It has also called out on CA to consider other methods such as conducting national surveys which tend to give an accurate representation on internet use in the country. This, the report offered, will ensure that policies formulated on internet use are based on “evidence-based” facts.