Kenya has revived its plans to regulate online streaming services to partly safeguard quality and address concerns over revenue losses for the State and private firms such as telcos amid a sharp growth in online content uptake.
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) is searching for a consultant to study reach of over-the-top (OTT) services in the country in telecommunications, broadcasting, and e-commerce segments and their impact on competition against business models of traditional service providers as well as the impact on business and government revenue.
Among the assignments set for the consultant is “to make appropriate regulatory recommendations on the treatment of the OTTs including online streaming services that substitute traditional services as a primary criterion for regulation of OTTs including online streaming services”.
The agency had in November 2018 invited bids for a similar consultancy but the matter was shelved.
With revived plans, Kenya joins a list of countries that are moving to regulate OTT providers of voice, video, data, and e-commerce services mostly dominated by multinationals over which individual nations exercise minimal legislative control.
India recently issued new regulations that tighten the grip of its regulatory authorities on OTT service providers, social media platforms as well as content creators.
