Kenya: Mobile subscriptions and broadband on the rise

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has stated that in the first quarter of the financial year 2015/2016, from July until September 2015, the number of mobile subscriptions grew by 4.7 percent to 37.8 million from 36.1 million in the fourth quarter. Mobile penetration increased by 4.2 percentage points from 83.9 percent in the previous quarter to 88.1 percent during the quarter under review. This is according to a report via TelecomPaper.

According to the report, there were 36.8 million pre-paid subscriptions, or 97.3 percent of the total. Post-paid subscriptions climbed to 989,889 from 963,684 subscriptions in the previous quarter.

Safaricom recorded a market share of 66.3 percent, down from last quarter’s 67.0 percent. Airtel Kenya saw its market share shrink by 0.3 percentage points to 19.1 percent. Orange Kenya had a rise in its market share to 11.8 percent and relative newcomer Equitel to 2.9 percent.

Safaricom had a 3.8 percent rise in its mobile subscriber base to 25.10 million subscriptions. Pre-paid subscriptions grew from 23.38 million last quarter to 24.26 million subscriptions during the quarter under review. Post-paid subscriptions increased from 805,651 to 833,818.

Airtel saw its subscriber base rise to 7.21 million from 6.86 million. There were 7.07 million pre-paid and 146,873 post-paid subscribers. Equitel saw its user base swell by 24.3 percent to 1.09 million, all of them pre-paid. The total number of Orange Kenya subscriptions increased from 4.04 million last quarter to 4.47 million this time. Post-paid subscriptions dropped from 11,264 to 9,198 subscriptions this time.

Local mobile traffic went up by 18.2 percent to 10.8 billion minutes from 9.2 billion minutes in the previous quarter. On-net traffic contributed 88.9 percent of total traffic at 9.6 billion minutes, up from 7.9 billion. Each subscriber talked for an average of 95.8 minutes per month during the quarter, up from 84.9 minutes in the previous quarter.

The volume of SMS sent during the first quarter rose to 7.0 billion from 6.5 billion, up 7.7 percent. Each subscriber sent an average of 61 messages per month.

During the quarter under review, the number of mobile money transfer subscriptions rose by 3.0 percent to 28.7 million from 27.7 million in the fourth quarter. The number of mobile money agents swelled to 135,724 from 129,357 in the last quarter.

The fixed network service continued its downward trend, with 87,111 lines, falling 0.7 percent from 87,774 in the previous period.

There were 21.6 million internet connections in the first quarter, up from 19.9 million in the last quarter. The estimated number of internet users went up to 31.9 million from 29.6 million estimated for the fourth quarter. It is thought that 74.2 percent of inhabitants had internet access, up  from 69.0 percent last quarter. The number of broadband subscriptions increased by 19.3 percent to 6.3 million from 5.3 million in the last quarter, putting penetration at 14.7 percent.

During the quarter under review, international bandwidth available in the country dropped by 7.2 percent to 1.5 million Mbps from 1.6 million Mbps in the last quarter. Thus bandwidth utilisation represented 51.1 percent of total capacity, up from 47.2 percent

By the end of the quarter in review, the number of registered internet domain names rose by 17.8 percent to 46,411 from 39,386 in the previous quarter.

Staff Writer