President Ruto says Elon Musk's Starlink has helped Safaricom up its internet game

Speaking during a United States - Kenya Business and Investment Roundtable in New York, President Ruto explained how the Satellite internet provider has created competition, causing the existing players to provide better services. 

The president encouraged competition among players across the board to promote quality and effective delivery of services.

"I have my CEO for Safaricom, sometimes he's not very happy with me for bringing other characters like Elon Musk and others into the space. I keep encouraging Peter that competition makes you keep ahead and he's been doing pretty well, I must admit, he's really upped his game," Ruto said.

Safaricom controls the lion's share of the fixed internet market, with over 370,000 homes and 32,000 businesses connected to various internet packages through fibre-optic technology.

On Monday, September, 23, Safaricom increased its internet speeds for the Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diamond packages to keep up with the competition.

Further, the telco introduced a new Platinum package that offers 1,000 Mbps to meet the needs of heavy internet users such as gamers and content creators. 

In contrast, Starlink uses satellites in space to send and receive data to an internet service provider which communicates to a satellite dish and then to a WiFi router.

The technology is effective as people in rural areas can access the internet as opposed to fibre-optic cables which may not be available. 

Since its launch in Kenya in July 2023, Starlink has wooed customers due to its fast internet speeds of between 50 Mbps and 500 Mbps, contrary to other local providers which deliver speeds ranging up to 100 Mbps. 

The company aims to increase download speeds to 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps as it launches more satellites in space.

During the roundtable, the president reiterated the government's commitment to connecting 100,000 of fibre to increase broadband connectivity across the country.

He also divulged the government's ability to leverage Artificial Intelligence in three critical areas; a new university funding model, fertiliser distribution and the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF).

He added that the government would fully leverage AI once the requisite laws are passed in Parliament. 

"Parliament has the necessary legislation that will support our AI journey but already we're leveraging on AI to do our needs testing instrument for how we're distributing education money to beneficiaries to use it to get the algorithm to know the financial status of each parent," the head of state remarked. 

"We are using to desegregate how we distribute our fertiliser to farmers. We are using it for the beneficiaries of SHIF." 

Ruto, however, acknowledged the challenges presented by AI which can pose a lot of cybersecurity threats. 

"The challenge we have in AI is fake news, disinformation, misinformation and cyber security where sometimes I have to call Ndegwa to figure out when government services are attacked and he's been useful so there's hope for us to collaborate with Google and others to better secure the platforms," he added.