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Imagine paying for your internet the same way you pay for electricity. No more flat-rate bundles, no more "unlimited" packages that quietly throttle you after 50GB. Just a meter, ticking away, and a bill at the end of the month that reflects exactly what you used.
That is the pitch behind the Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2025, sponsored by Aldai MP Marianne Kitany. On paper, it sounds like consumer protection. In practice, digital rights groups say it could hand the state one of the most detailed surveillance tools it has ever had.
The Bill was published back in March 2025, but it only had its First Reading in the National Assembly on July 1, 2026. A day later, it was committed to the Departmental Committee on Communication, Information and Innovation, which is now gathering views from ISPs, consumer groups, and civil society before compiling a report for the House. That is the stage we are at now: the point where public input can still shape, stall, or kill the Bill before it moves any further.
What the Bill Actually Proposes
At its core, the Bill amends the Kenya Information and Communications Act to redefine "telecommunication operator" so that it explicitly includes internet service providers. That single change pulls ISPs into a regulatory framework built for utilities.
Once that happens, every ISP licensed in Kenya, from Safaricom and Airtel to Zuku, Faiba, JTL, and even satellite providers like Starlink, would be required to operate a metered billing system that:
Assigns each customer a unique and identifiable meter number
Monitors customer usage in real time
Converts that usage into "readable details"
Generates invoices based strictly on consumption
Allows users to verify their own bills
On top of that, ISPs must submit information from these billing systems, including every subscriber's meter number, to the Communications Authority of Kenya at least once every financial year. Companies that fail to comply face fines of up to KES 5 million.
Kitany frames this as a fairness issue. Her argument is that current billing practices are opaque, that "unlimited" plans often come with hidden caps, and that a metered system would let people pay only for what they actually use, protecting their economic interests under Article 46 of the Constitution.
Why Human Rights Groups Are Alarmed
Here is where the Bill runs into serious trouble. Amnesty International Kenya has come out strongly against it, arguing that the legislation would institutionalize mass surveillance under the guise of billing reform. Victor Ndede, Amnesty International's Technology and Human Rights Manager, has been one of the most vocal critics. He points out that a unique, identifiable meter number tied to each person creates a permanent trail, and that the Bill never clarifies what exactly counts as "customer usage" or what will ultimately be shared with the Communications Authority.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ Kenya) has gone further, describing the Bill as a Trojan horse for mass surveillance. Demas Kiprono, an ICJ Kenya representative, has compared the meter number to opening a permanent file on every citizen, one the state can access on demand.
The core legal problem is glaring: the Bill contains no mention of Data Protection Act compliance, no retention limits, and no clarity on data security once subscriber records reach the Communications Authority. Kenya's Data Protection Act, 2019, exists precisely to govern how sensitive personal data like this should be collected, stored, and processed. A Bill that requires ISPs to hand over detailed usage records annually, without referencing that law at all, is either a serious oversight or a deliberate gap.
There is also a technical reality that makes the surveillance concerns harder to dismiss. Accurately metering usage, especially for zero-rated services, often requires Deep Packet Inspection, a technique that lets ISPs examine the actual content of data traffic rather than just its volume. Once that capability exists for billing purposes, nothing stops it from being repurposed for monitoring. Infrastructure built for one reason rarely stays confined to that reason.
The timing matters too. This Bill is moving through Parliament less than two years after the #RejectFinanceBill protests, which were organized largely through TikTok, X, and Instagram. Amnesty International has separately documented that the government's response to those protests included thousands of arbitrary arrests and dozens of enforced disappearances. Against that backdrop, a law that could map exactly who is online, when, and doing what, understandably makes people nervous.
The Economic Angle Nobody Is Talking About Enough
Beyond privacy, there is a real business cost here that deserves more attention than it is getting. Setting up metered billing infrastructure is expensive. For large players like Safaricom, that cost is absorbable. For Kenya's smaller regional ISPs, the ones that have been quietly expanding affordable internet access to rural and underserved areas through bundled, flat-rate offerings, this could be a serious blow.
These smaller providers have been a big part of why internet prices have dropped in Kenya over the past few years. Competition works. If the Bill forces them into expensive compliance regimes without support, we could see consolidation, higher prices, or providers simply exiting the market. That would hurt exactly the people the Bill claims to protect.
There is also a subtler point worth sitting with. Once fiber and mobile network infrastructure is built, the marginal cost of delivering an extra gigabyte to an existing customer is close to zero. So when a bill's justification hinges on "fair billing based on actual consumption," it is fair to ask whether this is really about fairness, or about squeezing more revenue out of a captive market that has grown used to flat, predictable pricing.
Where the Bill Goes From Here
The Bill still has a long road ahead. After the Departmental Committee finishes gathering stakeholder input, it will compile a report recommending whether the Bill proceeds unchanged, gets amended, or gets thrown out. If it survives that stage, it moves to a Second Reading, then to the Committee of the Whole House for line-by-line amendments, and finally to a Third Reading and presidential assent before it can become law.
That means there is still real room for this to change. Public participation at the committee stage is not just a formality. It is genuinely one of the few points where ISPs, consumer advocates, and ordinary Kenyans can push back on specific provisions before they get locked into law.
My Take
I think the reasonable answer here is that this Bill does not have to be either purely a billing reform or purely a surveillance tool. It could be both, and that is exactly the problem. A metered billing system does not inherently require handing the state a searchable archive of who used how much data and when. You can build a system that verifies fair billing without also building a state-facing dossier on every internet user in the country.
The fact that the current draft does not even reference the Data Protection Act is the clearest signal that privacy was not a primary design consideration here. If Kitany's intentions are genuinely about consumer fairness, the fix is straightforward: explicit Data Protection Act compliance, strict data minimization so that only what is needed for billing gets collected, clear retention limits, and independent oversight of what the Communications Authority does with the data it receives. None of that undermines the billing goal. All of it protects against the surveillance risk.
Until those safeguards are written into the Bill itself, rather than promised informally, it is reasonable for Kenyans to treat this as a surveillance risk wearing a billing-reform costume. The public participation window is open right now. If you run an ISP, work in tech policy, or simply care about what happens to your data once you're online, this is the moment to make your voice heard before the Bill moves any further.
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