Kenya ISPs; is the glass half full or half empty?

It is fascinating to read and hear the angst and frustration expressed by Kenyan Internet users. This week Sunny Bindra captured the thoughts and feelings of many in his column in the Sunday Nation aptly titled "Since when is misleading customers a winning strategy?".

Whilst I do agree with the gist of Sunny's article. I have to say that I feel that most Internet users in Kenya do not fully appreciate the progress achieved in the last decade by ISPs and other telecommunications companies.

Let me illustrate this with three examples;

• My search for Internet at home in Nairobi may be over soon when I am connected via fiber to the home (FTTH) through Zuku. I am sure I will experience frustration with the service; outages and speeds of 1 mbps rather than the advertised 4 mbps.

• At the office , I have experienced 2 outages in past 4 months with the Internet service provided by Access Kenya. Sure the Internet speeds may hover around 1 mbps rather than the advertised 2 mbps but the service is pretty reliable.

• I have great 3G Internet service on the Safaricom mobile phone account. I have purchased the 4GB data bundle and will pay just over 1 KES per MB.

Ten years ago I would never have believed the prophet that would have declared I would have FTTH, reliable Internet access and 3G service on my phone in Nairobi. It is said that "we invariably overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies while underestimating their longer-term effects."

Let us celebrate the progress because the glass is half full and prepare because the future is very bright!