First Impressions of Airtel Kenya’s Kes. 10,000 5G Wireless Router.

This is one of the models of the 5G capable wireless routers that Airtel Kenya is selling since they launched their 5G network in the country a few weeks ago.

Airtel Kenya is selling its 5G wireless routers for a fairly affordable(?) Kes. 10,000 which is considerably less expensive than the one from Safaricom that goes for Kes. 25,000.

Airtel Kenya’s 5G wireless router also seems to have many more ethernet ports and even a USB-C port unlike the one(s) that Safaricom is currently selling at their shops.

I only had a look at Airtel Kenya’s 5G wireless routers at one of their shops earlier today upon learning that you can’t (yet?) buy their 5G enabled SIM cards to use on 5G capable smartphones. What gives?! This completely stumped me as I actually wanted to sign up and finally take Airtel Kenya’s 5G network for a spin.

Even if Airtel Kenya’s main agenda is to push their 5G wireless routers, they should have also made it possible to use their service on 5G capable smartphones from launch, as is indicated on their website as of this writing.

However, the irony is that Airtel Kenya’s 5G offering actually has a real shot of taking the fight to Safaricom given that their 5G network coverage is already vast nationwide and even more expansive than Safaricom’s as far as I can tell. True story!

Secondly, Airtel Kenya’s 5G data bundles are actually very competitive as well in relative terms to Safaricom’s. Their 5G data bundles are Kes. 3,000 for 300GB and Kes. 5,000 for 600GB on a monthly basis. This means that Airtel Kenya could potentially sign up many customers on this basis alone if they play their cards right.

Going forward, if all goes well, I will get an Airtel Kenya 5G wireless router by next week and at that point, I’ll have an opportunity to see how their 5G network performs in terms of speed and quality compared to Safaricom’s 5G network. This will be interesting so stay tuned for updates in due course!