Radio licensing in Kenya: what the Communications Authority requires

Organizations buying two-way radio in Kenya are often surprised to learn that the equipment is the easy part. You cannot lawfully switch a professional radio system on until the Communications Authority of Kenya has licensed it, and that requirement catches out more first-time buyers than any technical issue.

This article sets out what the Authority requires, what it means for a project timeline, and where the avoidable mistakes are.

The legal position

Under section 36 of the Kenya Information and Communications Act, all radio communication equipment in Kenya must be owned and operated under a licence issued by the Communications Authority, and that licence must be kept in force at all times through regular payment of the prescribed fee.

Two things in that sentence do the work. First, it covers ownership and operation, not just transmission; possession of unlicensed equipment is not a safe position. Second, the licence is a continuing obligation, not a one-off permission. A lapsed licence is an unlicensed system.

Which category applies to you

The Authority administers radio communication licensing across several categories. The ones most organizations encounter are:

• Private Radio Networks, covering HF and VHF private networks and private paging, the category most commercial, security, conservancy and industrial users fall into
• Fixed, cellular mobile and public paging services, for operators providing services to third parties
• Aircraft station and maritime (ship) station licences, for aviation and marine operations
• Amateur radio and citizen band licences, which are not appropriate for organizational use however convenient they may look
• Wireless access systems in the shared 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, which operate on a shared, non-protected basis under the Authority's guidelines

That last point is worth dwelling on. Shared non-protected means exactly what it says: you may use the band, and you have no protection from interference by others entitled to use it. It is not a substitute for assigned spectrum in an operation where communication has to work.

The mistake that costs the most

It is not choosing the wrong category. It is treating licensing as something that happens after procurement.

Frequencies are assigned by the Authority. You do not select them, and you cannot assume that the frequencies a system was configured for elsewhere will be available to you here. If equipment is bought and programmed before assignment, there is a real chance of having to reprogramme it, and a smaller but expensive chance of having bought equipment that cannot operate on what you are assigned at all.

Equipment bought abroad is the common version of this. It may be perfectly good, and it may still be unusable, either because it cannot be programmed to the assigned frequencies or because it has not been type approved for use in Kenya. The Authority operates equipment type approval, and approval is a prerequisite for putting a system into service.

What the Authority expects of an applicant

The general conditions across the Authority's licensing categories are consistent and unsurprising. An applicant is normally expected to be an entity registered in Kenya, to have a registered office and permanent premises here, and to provide evidence of tax compliance and a PIN certificate. Applications are made on the Authority's forms, in English, and addressed to the Authority.

None of that is difficult for an established organization. It is difficult for a project that assumed the supplier would handle everything and discovers in week three that the paperwork requires the customer's own corporate documents.

Ongoing obligations

A licence is not the end of it.

• Fees are payable on a recurring basis and the licence must be kept in force
• The Authority monitors and inspects spectrum use to confirm it matches the licence terms
• Frequency assignments are tied to the licensee and to the stated use; changing either is a matter for the Authority, not an internal decision
• Adding sites, raising power or extending coverage may require variation of the assignment

For a security company or conservancy running a radio fleet, the practical implication is that somebody has to own this, a named person who knows when the licence renews and what the fleet is authorised to do.

How to build it into a project properly

The sequence that works is straightforward and the one that fails is equally predictable.

Who does what

Licensing tends to stall when nobody has said out loud which side is doing which part. The division that works is roughly this.

The licence is held by the organization, not by the supplier. That matters at the end of a relationship: if you change suppliers, the assignment stays with you, provided the paperwork was done in your name from the start.

How long it takes

Timelines vary with the category and with how complete the application is when it arrives. What is predictable is the cause of delay: incomplete applications, corporate documents that have to be chased internally, and equipment ordered before the assignment is known.

Plan on the licensing running in parallel with procurement and installation rather than after them, and start it at design stage. A project that treats licensing as the final step before go-live will discover that it is not a step it controls.

What it costs

Fees vary by service type and by the spectrum involved, and the Authority publishes current schedules. We are deliberately not quoting figures here, because a fee schedule quoted in an article outlives its accuracy and a wrong number in a business case is worse than no number. Ask, and we will confirm the current position for your specific case before you commit to a system size.

A note on why this is worth doing properly

Licence cost is a genuine input into system choice. It is one of the reasons broadband push-to-talk over cellular has taken share from conventional radio in some Kenyan operations; it runs on a licensed operator's network rather than on spectrum you licence yourself, which removes both the assignment process and the recurring frequency fee. That is not automatically the better answer. But it is a real comparison, and it should be made with the licensing cost visible rather than discovered afterwards.

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