Kenya’s ministry of ICT has confirmed that the country will soon be swimming in the four generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) pretty soon.

 The Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Fred Matiang’I confirmed that the government has completed the process of developing a new spectrum policy which will soon be available for public comment.

“After receiving the memoranda with various comments on the policy, we will hold a stakeholders’ meeting and then present the policy to the cabinet for approval,” he said.

Matiang’i said that the consultation is going to take about three to five months adding that the public should present their views on how the spectrum should be managed because it is a national resource.

“We have proposed we go by the public private partnerships ownership model so as to avail the broadband in wholesale basis but there are actors who think we should auction licenses after grouping the spectrum into two or three bands,” said that Cabinet Secretary

Currently the Communication Authority of Kenya gives operators licenses for either 2G or 3G networks.

Last year the National Treasury had approved the proposed ownership model that required the government to provide frequencies and the interested stakeholders to invest Sh10 billion in order to begin the development of the 4G LTE.

The operators were Safaricom, Airtel, Orange, Yu, Liquid Telecoms, and MTN Business.

However, the roll out failed as Safaricom pulled out citing that the government was sluggish in getting shareholders to agree.