By 
Airtel Africa has begun the formal liquidation of Airtel Kenya Telesonic Limited, the wholesale fibre and data infrastructure subsidiary it registered in Kenya in July 2022, after the company failed to record a single shilling in revenue throughout its existence.
The company's board resolved to voluntarily wind up the entity on February 6, 2026, the same day it surrendered its Network Facilities Provider Tier 2 (NFPT2) licence, numbered TL/NFP/T2/01269, to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA). The Registrar of Companies has confirmed that Airtel Kenya Telesonic will be struck off the corporate register by December 2026, following a request from Airtel itself.
What Telesonic Was Built To Do
Telesonic was conceived as Airtel Africa's dedicated wholesale, or carrier-of-carriers, business. Rather than selling connectivity to households or individual businesses, the unit was designed to lease capacity on Airtel's terrestrial fibre network, which spans more than 78,000km across the continent, to other operators: internet service providers, banks, data centres, government agencies, cloud hyperscalers and rival mobile network operators. The model mirrors what Safaricom Wholesale, Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Seacom already run in Kenya, and it is tied into the 2Africa submarine cable consortium alongside Meta, Vodacom and MTN.
The Kenyan entity is wholly owned by Airtel Telesonic Kenya Holdings (UK) Limited, which holds all 1,000 issued shares at KES 100 each. Its two directors, Sanjeet Kumar Pokala and Ashish Malhotra, both Indian nationals, signed off on the final liquidation accounts on March 31, 2026.
A Business That Never Sold Anything
The numbers in Telesonic's own financial statements tell a stark story. Its first accounts, covering the eighteen months from incorporation on July 22, 2022 to the end of 2023, showed nil revenue, a single expense line of KES 66,667 in licence fees, KES 28,261 in finance income, and a net loss of KES 38,406. Revenue stayed at zero through both 2024 and 2025.
The losses, however, widened considerably. Telesonic posted a net loss of KES 2.9 million in 2024, which grew more than fivefold to KES 16.1 million in 2025. Much of that jump came from a KES 14 million charge to fully write off its NFPT2 licence, an asset originally valued at KES 15 million, effectively wiping the licence's book value off the balance sheet. By the close of 2025, accumulated losses stood at KES 19.08 million against a total asset base of just KES 284,275 in cash. The company also owed KES 18.5 million to its affiliate, Airtel Networks Kenya Limited, pushing it into a negative equity position.
Auditor Deloitte & Touche gave the 2025 accounts an unqualified opinion, meaning the statements were judged to present a true and fair view, but flagged an emphasis of matter noting that they were prepared on a liquidation basis rather than as a going concern, given the licence surrender and wind-down already underway. In documents reviewed by Business Daily, Airtel's ultimate parent, Bharti Airtel, stated that having assessed the company's operational outlook, it had concluded the entity was not able to continue as a going concern, and that the decision to wind it up arose from a combination of strategic, operational and commercial considerations.
Why Telesonic Failed to Gain Traction
Kenya's wholesale fibre and bandwidth market was already mature by the time Telesonic's licence went live. Safaricom, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Jamii Telecommunications, Seacom and MTN's Bayobab all had terrestrial routes in the ground, cross-border capacity, and long-term carrier contracts signed with the country's large institutional buyers well before Telesonic entered.
That left the Airtel unit competing for a small, already-served pool of enterprise and carrier customers, largely on price. Telesonic's late entry, combined with the absence of any meaningful revenue base, made it difficult for the company to build the scale needed to cover even basic infrastructure and administrative overheads. Unlike Airtel's ongoing retail broadband price competition against Safaricom, Zuku and smaller entrants such as Savanna Fibre, the wholesale segment rewards incumbency and existing carrier relationships more than aggressive pricing alone, and Telesonic appears not to have pursued the kind of price undercutting that might have won it early anchor clients.
Regulatory Timeline
The wind-down moved through several distinct regulatory steps over roughly a year:
Late 2025: Telesonic filed formal notice with the CA of its intention to surrender its NFPT2 licence.
January 21, 2026: The CA wrote back requesting that the physical licence booklet be returned for cancellation by January 30, 2026.
February 6, 2026: Telesonic returned the licence booklet to the CA, and the company's board passed a resolution approving voluntary winding up the same day.
March 31, 2026: Directors signed off on the final liquidation accounts, audited by Deloitte & Touche.
Pending: Formal gazettement and the completion of remaining termination procedures, with strike-off from the companies register expected by December 2026.
No Impact on Airtel's Consumer Fibre Business
Airtel has been explicit that the closure does not extend to its retail broadband operations. Airtel XStream Fibre, which connects homes and offices across Nairobi, is run through a separate legal entity, Airtel Networks Kenya Limited, which holds its own distinct licensing and continues to sign up buildings independently of Telesonic's wholesale licence. The Communications Authority's fixed broadband market data for the first quarter of 2026 placed Safaricom at 35.4 percent of Kenya's 1.47 million fibre subscriptions, followed by Jamii Telecoms' Faiba at 19.5 percent and Wananchi Group's Zuku at 10.4 percent, with Airtel not yet appearing among the top providers by subscriber count. XStream's own subscriber numbers were not broken out in the regulator's most recent published report.
A Narrower Retreat, Not a Regional One
Telesonic's Kenyan closure does not extend across Airtel Africa's footprint. The brand remains active in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Nigeria specifically, Airtel's Telesonic subsidiary has moved in the opposite direction: it picked up National Long Distance, Internet Service Provider, and Sales & Installation Major licences from the Nigerian Communications Commission in 2024 and now markets a live range of wholesale products, including dedicated internet access, international private leased circuits, and voice and SMS termination for enterprise customers, through Airtel Nigeria's business portal. Nigeria remains Airtel Africa's largest single market by revenue, contributing 24 percent of group earnings in the first half of 2025 at a record EBITDA margin of 56 percent, according to the company's own results.
Airtel Africa has not disclosed how, or whether, it plans to restructure its wholesale strategy in its 13 remaining African markets following the Kenya exit. The Kenyan closure marks at least the third instance in under five years of Airtel retreating from an underperforming asset in one of its African markets rather than continuing to invest in a turnaround, according to industry tracking of the group's portfolio moves.
Comments