In what may be a pointer to the tough economic times they are enduring, Kenyans sent fewer text messages, made less calls and even quit postpaid subscription services in their numbers in the 3 months between the start of April and the end of June, a recent quarterly report by the Communications Authority of Kenya shows.
While the total number of SIM cards in active use across the country rose by 0.6% to stand at 66.4 million, it’s what people are doing with those active SIMs that appears to have dipped.
Voice traffic dipped by 0.1% for off-net calls and 1% for on-net calls, a surprise since on-net calls (calls originating from and terminating on the same network e.g. Safaricom-to-Safaricom calls) are usually relatively cheaper across the board as there are no external termination rates to be factored in. SMS traffic for both (on-net and off-net) dropped by about 10%. Nearly similar patterns can be seen when it comes to international/roaming services.
The total number of postpaid subscribers across all mobile network operators dropped from 1.32 million the previous quarter (January – March 2023) to 1.27 million in the aforementioned period.
Safaricom, which is the postpaid services market leader, saw about 50,000 subscribers leave its postpaid service in 3 months. While the reasons for this are unknown, the company has recently taken steps to reorganize its postpaid service offerings, something that may have rubbed some of them the wrong way. Late last year, Safaricom had indicated that unused voice minutes would no longer be rolling over to the next month as had been the case previously, a rather unpopular move.
Mobile money services like M-Pesa were not spared as they registered a 1.1% decline quarter-over-quarter. This was before the coming into effect of higher charges levied on transactions made starting July.
Data as a whole (fixed/fibre and mobile) saw increased usage during the review period.
At the same time 5G mobile subscriptions registered an increase to about 450,000 from the 300,000 reported last time.
Safaricom continues its long stint at the top as the leader of Kenya’s mobile network market as far as subscribers go with a healthy 66% market share compared to the 27% of its closest competitor, Airtel Kenya.
Airtel’s market share rises to 31% when we look at mobile data subscriptions alone while Safaricom’s drops to 63%.
Not surprising, the number of feature phones in the Kenyan market dropped by 4% on the heels of aggressive campaigns by the likes of Safaricom to move subscribers from such devices to 4G smartphones like the ones it launched recently under its Lipa Mdogo Mdogo program which sees Kenyans access smartphones by paying between Kshs 20 and Kshs 50 daily, efforts that have so far seen over 1 million people make the switch.
