HIGH speed internet is steadily gaining ground with connections increasing by 35 percent over the past 12 months, the regulatory agency says.

Dr. Jabiri Bakari, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) director general, says in the latest communications sector performance report released in Dar es Salaam yesterday, that ‘fibre to the home’ (FTTH) subscriptions rose from 61,645 in January to 83,201 in December 2024.

While the number of FTTH subscriptions is still relatively small, the growth rate surpasses the 33.63 percent increase in mobile broadband subscriptions, the report indicates.

Overall, internet subscriptions grew by 32.63 percent last year, rising from 36,211,559 in January to 48,028,227 in December, including SIM card-based and fixed-line connections.

The tally represents users who have accessed internet services in the last three months regardless of the technology used, he said, hinting that fibre optic cables which enable FTTH, offer faster speeds and are ideal for high-volume data consumption.

These needs include quicker downloads, video streaming and gaming., where on the basis of TCRA statistics, internet users on FTTH mode obtain or send data up to three times faster than mobile broadband users.

From September to December 2024, FTTH broadband download and upload speeds stood at 31.8 and 40.9 megabytes per second (Mbps) respectively, compared to 10.8 and 13.2 Mbps for mobile broadband users, the report affirmed.

However, FTTH’s main disadvantage is its relatively higher installation costs, which varies by location tied to availability of fibre optic cables.

Internet subscriptions also increased by 16 percent from September to December 2024, rising from 41,376,545 to 48,028,227 while average data usage per subscription increased slightly to 4.49 gigabytes (GB) compared to 4.35 GB in September.

Despite this growth, local internet subscribers use 10.9 percent of available capacity for local and international outgoing and incoming traffic, where the capacity stands at 17,200 Gbps.

Just 1,868 Gbps was activated, implying current excess capacity or user poverty limitation for 15,332 Gbps available for activations.

There was slight growth in the number of registered domains with domestic names, from 31,584 in September to 32,267 in December 2024, an 11.24 percent increase from 29,006 in January, it added