Leading Kenyan
mobile phone operator Safaricom plans to move to an Internet protocol
(IP) network in the next two years to help lower costs and reduce
outages, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
An Internet protocol network
allows data to be transmitted continuously, while packet stream
technology involves transmitting data after it has been broken into
chunks.
"We want all our network to
be IP-based ... Safaricom in particular now is very much on a two-year
path to make all our systems completely IP, which means both our fixed
and our mobile system," Michael Joseph told a regional telecoms
conference.
"It's much simpler,
it's much cheaper ... you can have your links automatically move from
one switch to another if there's a breakdown," Joseph told Reuters after
his presentation.
The company,
which is 40 percent owned by Britain's Vodafone, says it has over 15
million active SIM subscribers, giving it roughly 80 percent of the
mobile telecoms market in east Africa's biggest economy.
Joseph said in March it was Safaricom's aim
to have 25 percent of revenue coming from data services within two years
as the number of mobile Internet users and subscribers to its money
transfer service, M-Pesa, continued to rise.
He
said the drive toward an IP network was happening in the background and
was not part of the company's push toward getting more revenues from
data.
Joseph did not say how much
the move would cost, but said Safaricom's capital budget for this year
was 23 billion shillings ($297 million).
Safaricom
is the only operator in Kenya with a 3G license. It typically accounts
for more than half the shares traded each day on the Nairobi Stock
Exchange.