Summary

  • Under the proposed five-unit bands, five GSM alarm units would attract KES 3,400 a year; six would attract KES 6,800. This is an illustration of the draft, not an existing bill.
  • The register would help determine both the national cost-sharing rate and each firm's charge. Rules for replacing, retiring and correcting device records remain unclear.

Five alarm units, KES 3,400 a year. Add a sixth, and the proposed regulatory bill becomes KES 6,800.

That jump follows the billing bands in the alarm-licensing consultation paper from Communications Authority of Kenya (CA). The draft proposes an annual GSM oversight fee of KES 680 per unit, but it also rounds a firm's billable count to the top of a five-unit band. One to five units are charged as five; six to ten as ten.

The example is arithmetic, not a report of a company receiving an invoice. Nor would every extra alarm double the bill. The sixth matters because it crosses a boundary. For a small provider, that boundary may be more useful to understand than the per-unit price.

A SIM card changes the licensing question

Traditional VHF alarm networks use dedicated radio frequencies. A GSM alarm sends its signal through a SIM-equipped device and a licensed mobile network instead. CA says its inspections between 2023 and 2026 found security firms replacing or supplementing VHF equipment with GSM.

The proposed charge is for oversight of those alarm services: registration, inspections, compliance work and the systems needed to administer them. It is not the existing VHF frequency fee of KES 1,250 per unit.

The draft's term “non-spectrum-based” is easy to misread. GSM certainly uses radio spectrum. The distinction is that the security firm does not receive a separate frequency assignment for each endpoint; it relies on another licensed operator's network.

For a hybrid alarm using more than one communications path, the paper promises one registration for the same customer endpoint, avoiding duplicate charging. Two routes for a distress signal should not, under that proposal, become two alarm registrations.

Which five—or six—does the register count?

Consider six installed alarms, one of which has been disconnected from the monitoring service. There are still six boxes on the premises, but only five are connected and able to send an alert. This is a hypothetical test of the proposal, not a reported billing dispute.

Which number would the firm pay on? Five would produce the KES 3,400 calculation; six would produce KES 6,800. The draft does not settle how the disconnected device leaves the count.

Its definition of an active alarm requires three things: the device is installed, connected to a monitoring or response service, and able to transmit during the reporting period. But the cost-sharing formula counts installed alarms reported by the licensed firms. It does not say how that list is adjusted for disconnections, replacements, removals or temporary inactivity.

The distinction affects more than one firm's bill. CA would also use the combined registered total to divide its costs across the industry. The same counting rule therefore needs to work both for the national total and for the list that puts an individual firm into a billing band.

The band is calculable; the rate is not yet reproducible

CA includes staff time, inspections and compliance checks, the computer systems used to run the scheme, and a share of administration costs. It proposes dividing that annual total by the registered units and gives a rounded rate of KES 680.

But it does not publish the underlying total cost or endpoint count. An outsider can calculate the effect of a five-unit band without being able to verify how the regulator obtained the rate.

The paper also compares KES 680 with estimated alarm-service revenue, describing the fee as 0.71%. That uses CA's estimate of KES 8,000 per customer per month. It is a nominal per-unit comparison, not evidence that every firm's actual burden would be 0.71% after rounding. The consultation asks whether the five-unit method is fair, including for smaller firms.

Still a proposal, not a collection date

The alarm entry on CA's consultation page, checked on 20 October 2026, links the paper and a comments template but gives no deadline for this particular consultation.

The draft's timetable is not a substitute. It places consultation in the first quarter of financial year 2026/2027, marked ongoing, but prints the implementation year as “FY 2027/2026”. That inconsistency cannot establish a start date.

Before the proposal becomes a dependable budget line, firms need to know which devices count on which date—and how to correct the answer. KES 680 is only part of the calculation.