Is Starlink, Quite Possibly, Disrupting The Home & Small Business Internet Market In Kenya?

Walking through the streets of Nairobi earlier today and seeing a small electronics store selling a Starlink kit suggests that the commoditisation of the satellite-based Internet Service Provider or ISP is well underway in Kenya. I don’t want to say the oft used phrase ‘digital disruption’ in this instance, but could it very well be happening right in front of us?!

I can’t help but draw parallels and a sense of deja vu to the time Safaricom launched their mass market proposition in 1999 of affordable mobile phones with prepaid mobile airtime scratch cards that completely revolutionised mobile communications in Kenya. Everyone signed up, and Safaricom struggled for years to keep up with the massive level of demand that outstripped its mobile network capacity to keep up at the time.

The rest, as they say, is history as Safaricom, quite literally ‘blew up’ to become the behemoth of a business that it is today. Going back to disruption, quite often, when it arrives, it looks like a toy and is typally derided and disregarded by incumbents. I’m not saying in any way that Starlink is a toy and has potential for disruption, but there seems to be something significant stirring where it’s concerned with home and small business Internet consumers in Kenya.

Once upon a time, Safaricom’s first and incredibly successful CEO Michael Joseph made what was seen at the time a highly controversial remark that ‘Kenyans are peculiar’. Many years later, this has proven to be an apt and prescient description of how well Kenyans take to the latest and great technologies, which ultimately birthed our Silicon Savannah. Starlink could indeed have met its perfect match with peculiar Kenyans! :)