Kenya to fine telcos for bad network service

On Techpoint Digest, we discuss Kenya's decision to fine telcos for poor network service, Meta's paid Internet era has officially begun, and why Spiro purchased a British engineering company.

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Kenya to fine telcos for bad network service

Meta’s paid Internet era has officially begun

Why Spiro bought a British engineering company

Kenya to fine telcos for bad network service

Telecoms mast

Kenya’s Communications Authority (CA) is done issuing warnings to telecom companies over poor network quality, and now it wants to start hitting them where it hurts: financially. In draft proposals published in May 2026, as reported by BusinessDaily, the regulator said telcos could soon face fines and business sanctions for dropped calls, weak Internet connections, and poor service delivery. It’s a major shift for the CA, which has spent years relying on compliance notices and improvement plans that haven’t done much to improve the customer experience.

The new rules would also raise the minimum service quality score from 80% to 90%, meaning operators will have to perform significantly better to stay compliant. And there’s another big change buried in the proposals: enforcement will now happen at the county level, not just nationally. That means a telco can no longer rely on strong performance in Nairobi or Mombasa to offset terrible service in places like Turkana or Mandera. If service quality drops in a specific county, the operator could be penalised there directly.

The proposal comes after another disappointing quality-of-service report from the regulator. For the year ending June 2025, Telkom Kenya scored just 52.76%, down sharply from 67.6% the previous year. Airtel Kenya also slipped to 81.14%, while Safaricom, still the strongest performer, scored 89.72%, just below the proposed 90% threshold. In other words, all three major operators would fail under the new rules if they were already in place today.

For consumers, especially outside Kenya’s major cities, this could be one of the most important telecom reforms in years. Millions of Kenyans now depend on mobile Internet for banking, online learning, remote work, st...