CCK yesterday released the September 2011 to Dec 2011 report. It was all gloomy for the voice and SMS use in the country while data registered growth in use and uptake.
The second quarter report shows that Safaricom and Esar gained the highest number of subscribers at 741 560 and 600 285 while Airtel Kenya and Orange Kenya registered 100 778 and 144 208 more users compared to the 1st quarter respectively.
In relation to the actual operator’s subscriber base, Essar Kenya gained 36.83%, Airtel Kenya 2.42%, Safaricom 4.13% and Orange Kenya 5.25% growth.
Despite registering not such a higher growth in subscriber numbers, Airtel, Orange and Essar are the only providers which registered positive gains voice sector at 6.24%, 0.22% and 3.95% respectively. Safaricom lost 10.41% of the voice market share in the country.
The summary of voice traffic and market shares per operator is as shown in the table below
| Table 5: Voice traffic by operator Name of Operator | Oct-Dec 11 | Jul-Sep 11 | |||||||||||||
| On-net | Off-net | Total | %Market Share | On-net | Off-net | Total | %Market Share | ||||||||
| Safaricom | 4,990,830,943 | 227,004,015 | 5,217,834,958 | 77.86 | 6,107,113,620 | 158,773,784 | 6,265,887,404 | 88.27 | |||||||
| Airtel | 427,361,165 | 429,766,670 | 857,127,835 | 12.79 | 197,613,358 | 267,443,282 | 465,056,640 | 6.55 | |||||||
| Essar Telecom | 436,837,581 | 135,028,258 | 571,865,839 | 8.53 | 260,915,776 | 63,848,060 | 324,763,836 | 4.58 | |||||||
| Telkom Orange | 15,541,171 | 39,570,030 | 55,111,201 | 0.82 | 14,455,121 | 28,249,555 | 42,704,676 | 0.60 | |||||||
Reacting to these reports, Shivan Bhargava, Airtel Kenya’s Managing Director said:
“Our growth in MOU during the quarter ending December 2011 was mainly driven by our usage and retention activity with our customers. We thank our customers for their loyalty and support during this period. Airtel will provide its customers with access to affordable superior quality communication and service on our network. We shall continue unveiling more value adding propositions for our customers to enable them achieve even more.”
The report also shows that the that in-network calls are 7 times more than off-network calls. This is good for Safaricom but not pleasing for other operators. Safaricom and Orange have previously opposed further reduction in the interconnection charges while Airtel and Essar have fought to see the rates reduced further.
President Kibaki suspended the reduction of the termination rates citing all manner of not so convincing excuses.
CCK registered 28.08 million subscribers nationally. The mobile penetration is now at just above 71% from just above 67% the previous quarter.
Though always chided for having the most primitive data connection in the country, Essar Kenya now has the second largest number of users of data in the country after Safaricom. Internet subscribers now stand at 6.15 million up 13.20% from the previous quarter and 86.62% from the previous year.
Mobile Internet Subscriptions Per Operator is as follows
| Name of Operator | December 2011 | % Market Share | September 2011 | % Market Share |
| Safaricom | 4,687,834 | 77.15 | 4,307,746 | 80.34 |
| Essar | 669,982 | 11.03 | 487,793 | 9.10 |
| Airtel | 608,088 | 10.01 | 460,221 | 8.58 |
| Orange Kenya | 110,538 | 1.82 | 106,290 | 1.98 |
Mobile internet subscription stands at 6.07 million registering a 13.04% from the 5.37 million in the previous quarter. Fixed internet subscription grew by more than 66% during the quarter and 337% compared the previous year. Internet penetration now stand at 36.3% up from 31.8% the previous year.
The fact that mobile communication covers only around 34% of land is still a bad idea since urban to rural migration has not happened since most of us still believe that there is no proper coverage at hom. I doubt the 89% population coverage as shown by CCK. I believe that it is still lower than 70%.
Again there was no growth in land coverage or even population coverage. Both stayed static.
Any, check out the whole report here http://bit.ly/Jn6fWh
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