Telkom, has indicated that it is planning to change its company structure to create two wholly-owned subsidiaries, that is Telkom Digital and T-Kash for its financial services businesses that had kicked off in August 2020.
The T-Kash subsidiary will house its mobile money services and announced loan app to compete with KCB M-Pesa and M-Shwari, which its rival Safaricom operates. T-Kash plans to launch a mobile loans service, giving Telkom Kenya customers access to instant microcredit via their mobile phones.
Telkom is in the process of integrating its mobile money service, T-Kash’s systems with local commercial banks to allow customers to send and withdraw money from their accounts.
The digital subsidiary is expected to involve infrastructure including a fibre network, international submarines cables and a smart landing hub to act as a gateway to the East African region amid increased demand for data service.
At the same time, Telkom is expanding its 4G network with the addition of 2000 network sites to strengthen its data coverage amid rising mobile internet demand. The firm is investing Ksh.11.7 billion ($100 million) in the expansion plan that will be undertaken in partnership with telecommunication companies – Swedish-based infrastructure provider, Ericsson and South Africa- based systems integrator NEC XON.
The investment is expected to increase the firm’s internet speed service and propel the firm’s capacity to gain a larger share of the internet business amid increasing competition for mobile data subscriptions in the market.
The telco in partnership with Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (Peace) in March this year also launched the sixth submarine internet cable to offer higher speeds, lower latency and broader bandwidth.