7th August, 2020 THE KENYA GAZETTE fore, Content in the era of media convergence and globalisation; Global partnership on Child Online Protection and changing consumer preferences. 5.3 Free To Air television stations were 75 in 2018. The number of digital signal distributors in the country remained at 5 Digital Terrestrial Televisions Set-Top Box (STB) subscriptions stood at 4.5 million in 2018 while cable TV and direct to home satellite subscriptions stood at |.28M. Guiding Principles of the ICT Policy In the development of this policy, these principles were taken into account: ¢ Newspaper Circulation and online Newspaper Readership: In 2017, the circulation of daily English and Kiswahili newspapers declined by 4.9 per cent and 9.9 per cent, respectively due to online readership of newspapers. Similarly, the number of weekly English newspapers in circulation decreased by 5.9 per cent over the same period. However, the average online readership went up by 20.1 per cent in 2017. ¢ The value of mobile commerce transactions expanded by 85.5 per cent to Ksh 3.2 trillion in 2017. The growth was spurred by customer’s preference for mobile commerce and_ the availability of these services across the country. Economic Agenda Put ICT at the centre of the national economic agenda, recognising the role of the ICT sector as a critical pillar in national development and the attainment of the goal of becoming and remaining a global leader in the knowledge-based economy. Ubiquitous Access Fulfil the goal of giving every Kenyan affordable, high-speed broadband connectivity. access to reliable, 5.43 Technology Trends Constitutional Principles Improve government accountability, efficiency, service delivery and maintain an open government. Develop and protect citizen rights and duties as enshrined in the Constitution of our Republic. Private Sector Give the interests of the private sector top priority in order to foster entrepreneurship, innovation, investment and growth. Sustainable Development Leverage ICT to human development, knowledge society. 5.4 promote sustainable bridge the digital development, accelerate divide and develop a Situational Analysis and Highlights 5.4.1 Regulatory Background (No. 2 of 1998) and as amended by the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act, 2009, and the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment Act) 2013 provide the main framework for regulating the communications sector in Kenya. Other statutes include the Media Act, 2013 and the Kenya Information and Communications Technology (ICTA) Order 2013; among others. 5.4.2 Operational Environment Kenya is currently one of Africa’s fastest growing ICT markets where ICTs have increased productivity in all spheres of production process and enabled expansion of skills, contributing to improved standards of living for Kenyans. The Economic Survey 2018 report provides an overview of the ICT sector performance and development trends, recognizing that ICT output increased by 10.9% to Ksh 354.1 billion in 2017. ¢ Fibre Optic Coverage: Every county headquarters has been reached by the National Optic Fibre Broadband Infrastructure (NOFBI) in addition to other fibre-optic cables owned by private companies, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO) and Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC). ¢ 2G Coverage: Geographical coverage is 45% of Kenya’s land area, with 94.4% of the population covered. ¢ 3G Coverage: Geographical coverage is 17%, with 78% of the population covered * 4G Coverage: surface area. * Internet Domains: The total number of Internet domains grew by 13.08 per cent to 83,646 in 2018. The number of “.co.ke” domains increased by 13.72% to account for 92.5% of the total registered domains in 2017. Enhanced uptake and use of subdomain names as a result of awareness on the benefits of use, led to the doubling of domains under information content, mobile content and those used in network devices to 374, 126 and 466, respectively. Broadcast Frequency Reaches 37% of the population and 15% of the Services Modulation Gigabit and Petabit Wireless: Networks at the edge are going wireless. We observe the development of NBase-T, Terahertz wireless and other high-speed communications developments, and anticipate their wholesale adoption across all sectors of Kenya. Kenya will standardise on Gigabit/Ethernet speed wireless networks. Ubiquitous Communications: Internet access is available everywhere, all the time to everybody and everything via mobile phone, Wi-Fi, cable and other means. The internet protocol has become the de-facto means of communication. This trend will intensify and increase as available speeds improve. Pervasive Instrumentation: As more and more devices and elements of our environment become network enabled, from electric power meters, industrial equipment to household appliances we are entering an era where everything is producing data continuously and everything can talk to everything else. This is the Internet of Things (IoT) The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, the Kenya Communications Act ° and (FM) Subscriptions: 3067 The number radio stations stood at 173 of while or to use more recent nomenclature the Internet of Everything (IoE). The ability to remotely effect physical change inherently poses significant challenges and provides enormous advantages. You can now remotely monitor, manage and change processes and states without having to physically be present, but it also means you can do damage, destroy facilities and injure people remotely. Big Data: Every person, device and instrument has become a data emitter. The aggregation and storage of these enormous data volumes has led to a technical phenomenon called big data. The storage, analysis and interpretation of big data requires specialised techniques and equipment for which we must be prepared. Kenya is currently a net emitter of data and the facilities, capability and interest in being a sink need to be developed. We need to develop the capacity to store and use our own data. Deep Learning: Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence focusing on data classification, trend identification and predictive analytics. Using big data for machine learning is called deep learning. Deep learning has led to fundamentally useful outcomes such as accurate speech recognition, automated expert level medical diagnosis, better-than-human computer vision, holistic systems like self-driving cars and self guiding drones, and more mundanely improved purchase recommendation systems, customer credit rating and epidemic outbreak prediction. Blockchain and Digital Currency: A peer-to-peer distributed digital ledger that provides an immutable time-sequenced record of all transactions (blockchain) is a peer-to-peer distributed digital ledger that provides an immutable time sequenced record of all transactions, does not require trust between parties and facilitates electronic “smart contracts”. Blockchain can be used to track digital assets, assets whose ownership can be verified digitally such as land, equities, shares and derivatives, votes and currency. It’s most famous implementation is in Bitcoin, but it not limited to those domains. A blockchain’s integrity hinges on strong cryptography that validates and chains together blocks of transactions, making it nearly impossible to tamper with any individual transaction record without being detected. The Sharing Economy: The Sharing Economy is a socio-economic ecosystem built around the sharing of human, physical and intellectual resources. A sharing economy is an economic model in which individuals are able to borrow or rent assets owned by someone else. The sharing economy model is most likely to be used when the price