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Pilot project Sierra Leone

K3 technology is already fully operational in the USA, Spain, Czech Republic, Canada, Mauritius, Slovenia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

We chose Sierra Leone for the pilot project and proof of concept because of its harsh environment and socio-economic status. Sierra Leone is considered an emergent nation even among other emergent nations. However, K3 has managed to successfully launch its services to a clientele with a mean revenue of $127 from each client (retail and business) per month. Even though we undercut our competition by far, we still manage to hold a profitable margin.

Additionally, Freetown, the capital city, has a population of only 1 million persons. Sierra Leone is therefore considered a micro market. K3 has managed to become profitable in these conditions.

And the third big test for the project was the harsh environment and landscape. Freetown has 2 distinct properties that could present a challenge for the K3 Lastmile solution, and those are:

  • an abundance of hills and
  • an abundance of heavy rain.

These factors were concerns that needed to be addressed and tested in the field. The results have been more than excellent, with fully stable connections and no service interruptions. While the landscape produced some coverage dead spots, they were minimal, at around 2%.

As planned, marketing ran for only 6 months (works started in August 2018, and the first clients connected in February 2019). K3 Sierra Leona now has over 80 dedicated employees and over 2.000 paying customers, $1.3M revenue in 2020, and a projected $2M revenue in 2021. K3 Sierra Leone is currently valued at $17M.

K3 has done all of its work in-house:

  • Acquired all the needed licenses.
  • Set up the network.
  • Built the complete telecom infrastructure.
  • All software development.
  • Providing end-user connection services.
  • Marketing and management services.
  • Providing customer support.
  • Managing and maintaining equipment with a local team.

K3 Sierra Leone continues its exceptional growth and proves the quality and economic feasibility of its technology and business model.

K3 opening week in Sierra Leone:

Usage data in Sierra Leone for reference

Avg. speed per user during peak hours = 0.7 Mbps (meaning 1,000 users use 700 MB per second on the base station) – not driven by user package!

In current operations, we offer dedicated speeds (mainly used by businesses) and shared speeds starting at 5 Mbps. For shared speeds, we always guarantee 60% of the plan speed at peak hours and full speed off the peak hours.

Average data usage per user per month is 100-120GB.

As seen on the daily usage traffic graph, data usage of K3 services in Sierra Leone corresponds with world statistics for speed usage, which currently is 0.7 Mbps per user in peak periods.

K3 Sierra Leone daily traffic graph. Figure 29 K3 Sierra Leone daily traffic graph.