Airtel Africa is winding up a Kenyan wholesale fibre business after two years in which the unit failed to generate revenue, underscoring the difficulties facing new entrants to one of east Africa’s most developed telecommunications markets.
Airtel Kenya Telesonic Limited, established to provide wholesale fibre capacity and high-speed data transport to telecom operators, internet service providers, businesses and other large customers, recorded no revenue in either 2024 or 2025, according to its financial statements.
The subsidiary reported a loss of KSh16.1mn ($125,000) for 2025, up from KSh2.9mn the previous year. Its accumulated losses reached KSh19.1mn by the end of December, while cash holdings fell to KSh284,275.
The company also owed KSh18.5mn to Airtel Networks Kenya, another company within the group, leaving it with negative equity.
Airtel Kenya Telesonic has surrendered its Network Facilities Provider Tier 2 licence and begun the process of voluntary liquidation. The decision does not affect Airtel’s consumer broadband operations in Kenya, which are run through the separate Airtel Networks Kenya entity.
The closure illustrates a broader challenge in Africa’s telecoms sector: growing demand for digital connectivity does not necessarily translate into attractive returns for new infrastructure providers, particularly where established operators already control extensive fibre networks.
A difficult market for a new entrant
Airtel Africa had positioned Telesonic as part of a wider effort to build a pan-African wholesale connectivity business.
The model was intended to take advantage of the rapid growth in data traffic across the continent by selling network capacity to carriers, enterprises, governments, internet service providers and other large users.
Kenya was a logical market for such an expansion. The country has a relatively sophisticated digital economy, widespread mobile-money adoption and growing demand for cloud computing, data centres and enterprise connectivity.
But it is also a crowded market.
Safaricom, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Jamii Telecommunications, SEACOM and other operators already have substantial fibre infrastructure and established relationships with corporate and wholesale customers.
For a new wholesale provider, the economics can be unforgiving. Fibre networks require significant upfront investment, while profitability depends on securing enough customers and traffic to spread those fixed costs across the network.
Telesonic’s financial statements suggest that Airtel did not reach that point in Kenya.
From expansion to liquidation
The subsidiary notified the Communications Authority of Kenya in 2025 of its intention to surrender its licence.
The regulator requested the original licence document in January 2026. Telesonic returned it on February 6, when its board also approved the voluntary winding-up of the company.
The company’s Tier 2 licence, initially valued at KSh15mn, was fully amortised following a KSh14mn charge in 2025.
Deloitte & Touche, the company’s auditor, issued an unqualified opinion on the financial statements but highlighted the fact that they had been prepared on a liquidation rather than going-concern basis.
The company’s directors, Sanjeet Kumar Pokala and Ashish Malhotra, signed the liquidation accounts on March 31.
The remaining regulatory and corporate procedures will need to be completed before the company is formally dissolved.
Airtel stays in Kenya
The decision is narrower than an exit from Kenya.
Airtel Networks Kenya continues to operate Airtel’s mobile business and its fixed broadband offering, marketed as Airtel Xstream Fibre. That business serves residential and enterprise customers and remains separate from Telesonic.
Airtel is therefore retaining its customer-facing broadband operation while abandoning a wholesale vehicle that failed to establish a commercial foothold.
That distinction is significant. Consumer broadband offers Airtel a direct relationship with customers and recurring subscription revenue, whereas wholesale infrastructure requires substantial scale and long-term contracts before the underlying network can generate satisfactory returns.
Airtel’s decision suggests that the group sees greater strategic value in competing for end users than in maintaining a separate Kenyan wholesale infrastructure company without sufficient demand.
A test for Africa’s infrastructure ambitions
The closure comes at a time when telecom groups and technology companies are investing heavily in Africa’s digital infrastructure.
The continent needs more fibre, data centres and international connectivity as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, streaming and digital financial services drive data consumption.
Yet the Telesonic experience demonstrates that infrastructure demand alone is not enough to guarantee a viable business.
In Kenya, where fibre networks have been built over many years by incumbent operators and specialist infrastructure companies, a new wholesale provider must compete not only on capacity but also on price, coverage, reliability and existing commercial relationships.
Airtel Africa continues to pursue wholesale infrastructure businesses elsewhere on the continent, including through Telesonic operations in markets such as Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Rwanda.
Kenya’s failure therefore appears to be a market-specific retreat rather than a reversal of the group’s broader infrastructure strategy.
For Airtel, the lesson is a familiar one in capital-intensive telecoms: the opportunity created by rising demand for connectivity is not necessarily the same as the opportunity to earn an adequate return from building the network that carries it.
