As part of its continued efforts to boost data services this year, Telkom Kenya – a unit of France Telecom –announced that it is hoping to add between 50,000 and 100,000 users by the year's end. The announcement comes as Telkom Kenya inked a deal with China's second largest telecom equipment manufacturer ZTE to develop a 3G network for th ecountry at a cost of $47 million. The new network is expected to be ready sometime in the third quarter this year. The firm said it has 150,000 data customers who attach USB modems to their computers to access the Internet. “We expect to do 50,000-100,000 more between the launch date and the end of the year,” Telkom Kenya CEO Mickael Ghossein said in comments published by Reuters news agency. Data is seen as a major growth area in the telecoms sector, prompting firms to invest heavily to offset the impact of falling voice revenues on the back of a price war. The Regulator Communications Commission of Kenya should reduce the frequency fees it charges operators to help them lower their costs, Ghossein said, adding the fees accounted for 30 percent of costs. Telkom Kenya, whose mobile phone service has 2.5 million subscribers and is ranked third largest, has been losing money since France Telecom bought into it at the end of 2007. BM
