Airtel Kenya has applied for two licences that could give it greater regulatory scope over the infrastructure underpinning its network and the systems connecting its customers to international telecommunications networks, as competition for control of critical telecom infrastructure intensifies across Africa.
The applications, submitted to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), are for a Network Facilities Provider Tier 1 licence and an International Gateway Systems and Services licence under the Kenya Information and Communications Act, Cap. 411A.
The CA has now opened both applications to public scrutiny, giving individuals, companies and organisations 30 days from publication of the Kenya Gazette notice to submit representations or objections. A copy of any submission must also be forwarded to Airtel Networks Kenya Limited.
The development comes at a time when Kenya’s telecom market is becoming increasingly data-intensive and when operators across Africa are reassessing the economics of owning, leasing and monetising the infrastructure on which their networks depend.
Kenya recorded 84.1 million active mobile subscriptions in the third quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, according to the CA, up 7.4 percent from the previous quarter. Mobile broadband consumption reached 800 million GB, a 6 percent quarterly increase, while users on 5G networks consumed an average of 53.5 GB per subscription.
That growth is changing what infrastructure means to a telecom operator. Towers, fibre, data centres, transmission networks and international connectivity are no longer simply the physical layer behind a mobile service. They are increasingly strategic assets that determine how quickly an operator can expand capacity, how much it spends to deliver traffic and how much of the value created by rising data consumption it can retain.
Why Airtel is seeking greater infrastructure control
The significance of the NFP Tier 1 application lies in what the licence allows an operator to do.
Under Kenya’s Unified Licensing Framework, Network Facilities Provider licences cover the establishment and operation of communications infrastructure. Tier 1 provides for nationwide deployment using national spectrum resources, making it the broadest of the three NFP categories.
In practical terms, infrastructure at this level can include the physical and transmission systems required to carry telecommunications traffic — from fibre and transmission links to other network facilities.
For Airtel, greater regulatory scope in this area would matter because its Kenyan business is already large enough for infrastructure capacity to be a strategic competitive issue.
The operator accounted for 30.9 percent of Kenya’s mobile SIM subscriptions and 33.2 percent of mobile broadband subscriptions in the CA’s latest published market-share data, compared with Safaricom’s 65.1 percent and 62.8 percent, respectively.
Airtel has also been gaining ground over time. Its mobile subscription share increased from 26.8 percent in 2019/20 to 29.5 percent in 2023/24, while Safaricom’s share declined from 64.2 percent to 65.4 percent over the same period, according to the CA’s historical data.
The licence application therefore arrives against a competitive backdrop in which Airtel is no longer simply trying to maintain a secondary position. It is expanding the areas in which it can compete.
That expansion is already visible outside traditional mobile services.
On August 17, TechMedia Africa reported that Airtel Africa and Starlink launched a commercial satellite-to-phone service in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Also, Airtel launched XStream Fibre in Kenya in 2026, expanding its fixed broadband offering, while its infrastructure arm is developing a 44 MW hyperscale data centre at Tatu City, near Nairobi, expected to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2027.
MTN is going in the same direction — but with billions of dollars behind it
In February, MTN Group agreed to acquire the remaining shares of IHS Towers in a transaction that values the tower company at about $6.2 billion.
Last week, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) conditionally approved the transaction with a requirement that MTN sell down up to 30% of the Nigerian component of IHS to local investors at market prices over time.
MTN is now seeking Nigerian investors for that stake, with the transaction potentially raising between $900 million and $1.1 billion, according to reports citing people familiar with the discussions. MTN CEO Ralph Mupita has said proceeds from the sell-down would be used to reduce debt associated with the IHS transaction.
The two developments — MTN’s push to consolidate infrastructure ownership and Nigeria’s insistence on local participation — illustrate the competing forces shaping the next phase of Africa’s telecom industry.
The infrastructure race is becoming the next telecom battleground
Kenya already has a highly concentrated infrastructure market. A CA study found that Safaricom accounted for 59 percent of Kenya’s tower market in 2024, while American Tower Corporation had 33 percent, with Atlas and other operators accounting for the remainder. The study calculated a tower-market HHI of 4,562 and a four-company concentration ratio of 97 percent, describing the market as highly concentrated.
In other words, Airtel is competing in a market where control of the physical layer is already concentrated.
An NFP Tier 1 framework gives Airtel greater room to participate directly in that infrastructure market rather than depending exclusively on arrangements with infrastructure providers.
That could become increasingly important as data consumption rises.
Kenya’s total domestic mobile voice traffic reached 32.3 billion minutes in January-March 2026, but the more consequential number for future infrastructure investment may be data. Mobile broadband consumption reached 800 million GB in the same quarter, with average consumption rising to 15.1 GB per subscription.
The country’s 4G network already covered 97.3 percent of the population by June 2025, while 5G coverage had reached 30 percent.
That means the next infrastructure cycle will not simply be about connecting people who have never been connected. It will increasingly be about adding capacity for people who are already connected and consuming substantially more data.
