This is Part 3, in a Four Part series covering Airtel’s FY26 Results. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
Most of the coverage of Airtel Africa’s FY26 results released on Friday focused on the headline numbers: $6.42 billion in revenue, $813 million in profit, 183.5 million customers. All worth covering. But buried in the strategic-update section is a number that has not been getting the attention it deserves, and which has direct implications for Kenya’s home internet market.
Airtel’s home broadband (HBB) customer base grew 86% in FY26. Each of those customers now consumes an average of 195 GB per month.
For comparison, Airtel’s mobile data customers consume around 8.9 GB per month. That is roughly a 22x difference. Different product, different economics, different battle.
The bigger story is what this signals about where Airtel is pointing its next billion dollars.
Why home broadband is suddenly serious
For most of the last decade, Airtel Africa’s growth narrative was about mobile: more 4G coverage, more smartphones, more data ARPU. That story is still going. But mobile data growth, while strong, is now a known quantity. The fresh growth surface is fixed-wireless and home broadband, where customers behave more like fibre subscribers than like phone users.
The numbers Airtel disclosed for FY26 tell a clear story. HBB customers grew 86% across the footprint. Average consumption is 195 GB per customer per month. That is heavy streaming, multiple devices, full-household usage. It is the kind of consumption profile that justifies spectrum investment, 5G site densification, and dedicated customer-experience infrastructure like the myAirtel app’s home Wi-Fi data balance feature we covered last August.
It is not a coincidence that Airtel Africa has just raised FY27 capex guidance to roughly $1.1 billion (around KES 142 billion), with home broadband and data centres specifically called out as priorities. The investment is following the customer behaviour.
The Kenya angle
In Kenya, the home internet conversation has been dominated by two players for years: Safaricom and Airtel. Safaricom went first on 5G in October 2022 and now operates 1,879 5G sites across all 47 counties, according to its FY26 results. Airtel followed in mid-2023 with a smaller footprint that has been expanding steadily.
The independent performance numbers have favoured Safaricom. The most recent nPerf 2026 mobile barometer, which we covered in April, showed Safaricom winning every single measured performance metric, with average mobile download speeds of 30.55 Mb/s versus Airtel’s 13.20 Mb/s.
Yet despite that performance gap, Airtel keeps adding customers and pushing into home broadband specifically. The reason is that home broadband economics are different. A 195 GB-per-month customer is sticky in a way a mobile data customer is not. Once a household installs a router, configures it, and tells the kids the new Wi-Fi password, switching cost gets real. The first operator to put a working router in a living room often keeps that household for years.
That is the battle Airtel is now investing in. And Safaricom’s own FY26 results suggest the battle is real: the company disclosed that 5G fixed wireless access contributed 52.3% of its total connection growth this year. More than half of Safaricom’s new internet connections in FY26 came through wireless 5G routers rather than traditional fibre. That is the territory Airtel is now competing for.
Pricing is doing the heavy lifting
Airtel’s main weapon in the Kenya HBB fight is pricing.
Airtel’s cheapest 5G home plan is now KES 1,999 per month for 15 Mbps, with a free 5G router and a one-time connection fee of KES 1,000, according to Airtel Kenya’s own customer-care messaging. Safaricom’s 5G Home plans, per the company’s published terms, start at KES 4,000 per month for 50 Mbps, with a one-time router cost of around KES 2,999.
The two operators are not selling on the same speed tier. Safaricom is selling more bandwidth at a higher floor price; Airtel is selling a lower floor price for less speed. For a household making the home internet decision for the first time, that price gap matters. First-month total cost works out to roughly KES 2,999 with Airtel versus around KES 7,000 with Safaricom.
For households in non-fibre areas with patchy fibre coverage, Airtel’s pricing makes the entry into home internet substantially cheaper. Safaricom is leaning on speed and consistency to justify the premium.
There is also a new front opening up. In late April 2026, Airtel Kenya quietly launched its own fibre-to-the-building service, Xstream Fibre, with entry plans starting at KES 1,999 per month for 15 Mbps and zero upfront installation costs. That is a direct attack on Safaricom Home Fibre, where the equivalent Bronze plan is KES 2,999 per month for 15 Mbps. The competitive pressure on Safaricom’s fixed-broadband stronghold has gone from theoretical to actual within the last fortnight.
Our coverage of the Tatu City data centre earlier this financial year is part of the same picture. The 44 MW Nxtra facility, due online in Q1 2027, is not just enterprise capex. It is the kind of in-country compute and content-delivery infrastructure that ultimately serves home internet customers too, by reducing latency for local content.
Where this is heading
Three things to watch over the next 12 months.
First, 5G site count. Airtel Africa now has 3,116 5G sites across six markets group-wide, including Kenya. The question is how aggressively that figure climbs in FY27. If Airtel doubles down on 5G site density in Nairobi and major towns specifically, the home broadband product becomes much harder to dismiss.
Second, Safaricom’s response. Safaricom has historically priced its home internet products at a premium, justified by performance. With 5G FWA now driving more than half of its connection growth, and with Airtel undercutting on entry-level pricing in both 5G and fibre, Safaricom will eventually have to either match on price or differentiate harder on quality. Both have costs.
Third, the regulator. The Communications Authority of Kenya, working with the Central Bank, is already considering broader pricing reforms across mobile money fees. It would not be unprecedented for similar cost-of-service conversations to spread to home broadband and 5G access. Lower regulated prices change the maths for both operators.
The bottom line
Airtel Africa’s mobile business in Kenya is a known quantity. The performance gap with Safaricom is real and has been measured. But Kenya’s home internet market is much earlier in its life cycle, and Airtel is now investing as if it intends to compete seriously here, not just be present.
86% HBB customer growth, 195 GB monthly consumption, a $1.1 billion FY27 capex pot pointed at fibre, 5G, data centres, and HBB, and a fresh fibre product launched two weeks ago. Whether all of that translates into Kenyan market-share gains depends on execution. But the intent is now obvious. Safaricom’s home internet stronghold is no longer uncontested.
