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Aldai MP Marianne Kitany is seeking to introduce a significant change in how internet services might be billed in the near future.
Her Kenya Information and Communication (Amendment) Bill 2025 proposes that all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) adopt a metered billing system.
This means that consumers would be billed strictly based on the amount of data they consume.
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What the Bill Proposes
Under the amendment, every ISP licensed under Kenyan law will be required to implement a system that:
Assigns each customer a unique meter number to track their internet usage.
Continuously monitors the user’s data consumption.
Converts the raw usage data into detailed, readable reports.
Generates invoices based strictly on actual consumption.
Allows users to verify the accuracy of their bills.
Additionally, ISPs must report annually to the Communications Authority of Kenya on the billing systems they use and provide data on all issued meter numbers.
According to the MP, this protects internet consumers by ensuring they are charged fairly according to the real value of the services they receive, addressing concerns about unfair pricing or hidden charges.
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Why Metered Billing?
Currently, many ISPs in Kenya offer data bundles or unlimited internet plans where customers pay a fixed fee regardless of how much data they use.
She argues that while this can be convenient, it can also lead to hidden costs, unfair billing practices, or overcharging, where consumers might feel exploited.
Concerns and Challenges
One of the biggest concerns surrounding Kenya’s proposed metered billing system for internet services is the issue of privacy and data security.
The bill requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to assign each user a unique meter number and continuously monitor their internet usage in detail.
According to Victor Ndede, a Tech & Human Rights Manager at Amnesty International Kenya, this means ISPs will collect vast amounts of data on how much internet a person uses, when, and potentially what types of services they access.
Such detailed monitoring raises serious privacy questions. Collecting and storing this level of information could allow ISPs, or any party with access to the data, to build comprehensive profiles of individual online behaviour.
This includes sensitive information about users’ habits, interests, and daily routines. The risk of this data being accessed without consent, whether through hacking or surveillance, is a real threat.
“It means that all this data will be available for the Communications Authority, for the internet service provider, but the question is, who does the government need to know how I got to my 50GB a month bundle?” Victor Ndede says.
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Kenya’s existing Data Protection Act, enacted in 2019, offers some safeguards by setting rules on how personal data should be collected and protected.
However, the introduction of metered billing significantly expands the scope of data collected, specifically tied to users’ internet activity.
This raises questions about how ISPs will ensure compliance with the law, what security measures will be put in place to protect this data, and how long the information will be retained.
There are also concerns about potential government access to detailed internet usage records, which could infringe on citizens’ rights to privacy.
Furthermore, without strict regulations, ISPs might share user data with third parties like advertisers, leading to further erosion of privacy.
For metered billing to work without compromising privacy, there must be transparency about what data is collected and how it is used.
ISPs should be legally required to limit the data strictly to billing purposes, employ strong encryption to protect it, and delete it when it is no longer necessary.
While Aldai MP Marianne Kitany’s proposed metered billing system aims to promote fairness and transparency in how Kenyans are charged for internet services, it opens up a complex debate about privacy, data protection, and regulatory oversight.