CCK report sees growth in mobile subscriptions, spike in Internet bandwidth Dennis Mbuvi
Communication Commission of Kenya offices. (Image: humphreykariuki.com)
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has released the latest statistics for Kenya's telecommunication subscribers for the last quarter. The information is for the July to September 2011 period and is based on figures submitted by telecommunication providers in Kenya. All licensed telecommunication providers in Kenya are required by law to file regular reports with CCK, the regulator.
In the report, mobile phone subscribers had increased to 26.4 million from 25.3 million in the previous three months, a 4.8 percent increase. Land lines decreased 5.19 per cent to stand at 355,493 from 374,942 . Phone density for the country now stands at 68.2 per cent from 65.15 per cent.
The average number of minutes spend by phone subscribers on calls rose to 89.3 from 82.4, while SMS numbers jumped 124 per cent from 8.5 SMS per subscriber to 18.99.
Safaricom accounted for an increase of 593, 177 subscribers to 17,946,363 from 17,352,186. Airtel saw a similar increase of 557,567 subscribers to 4,172,186 subscribers from 3,614,619. Yu (Essar Telkom) saw an increase of 46,742 subscribers to 1,629,289 subscribers from 1,582,947 subscribers. Orange saw an increase of 16,686 subscribers to stand at 2,745,702 subscribers from 2,729,016. Market share by percentage is Safaricom (67.7), Airtel (15.7) , Yu (6.2) and Orange (10.4).
Safaricom held 88.27 per cent of voice traffic (6,265 million minutes) followed by Airtel at 6.55 per cent (465 million minutes) Yu at 4.58 per cent (324 million minutes) and Orange 0.6 per cent (42 million minutes. In the three months, both Airtel and Orange saw a decrease in total number of minutes with a 2.17 per cent decrease and a 0.15 per cent decrease respectively.
Prepaid mobile phone subscriptions grew 4.8 per cent to 26.260,564 from 25,048,774 while postpaid stood at 233,373 up 1 per cent from 230,994.
Mobile money subscriptions increased 5.9 per cent in the three months to stand at 18,414,667 from 17,394,727 while deposits grew 17.5 per cent to 56,704 million Ksh from 48,270 million.
Internet subscriptions in the country rose to 5.42 million from 4.25 million , which CCK estimates to result in 14.3 million Internet users from 12.53 million users. CCK uses a formula that assumes Internet subscriptions are shared to result in a higher user number than subscriptions.
Broadband subscriptions also increased to 126,589 from 121, 126 in the previous three months. Broadband subscriptions represent 2.33 per cent of Internet subscriptions.
Interestingly , total International bandwidth used by the country saw a huge spike , growing seven times from 32,270.52 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 213, 048.83 Mbps. 1 Mbps can download 128 kilobytes every second, taking 24 seconds to download a standard Mp3 file and about one and a half hours to download a 700 Mb movie.
Safaricom was still remains the largest Internet service provider with a 79.45 per cent share , down from 84.17 per cent , followed by Airtel (Celtel Kenya) at 8.49 per cent, also down from 11.66 per cent, followed by Orange (2.15 % from 2.89 %) , Kenya Data Networks, Access Kenya, Wananchi (Zuku), Swift Global , Iway , Flexible Bandwidth , Internet Solutions and CallKey networks. Other providers not mentioned above accounted for 492,009 subscribers up from only 9,532 three months earlier (0.22 per cent to 9.07 per cent) ans saw the decrease of market share of all major providers. Mobile phone subscribers however still acoount for 99% of the countries Internet subscriptions. Safaricom at one point in the past accounted for 92 per cent of Inetrnet subscribers.
The postal service continued its decline with a 15.21 per cent decline in number of letters sent in the three month period declining to 20.51 million from 24.26 million. International mail however increased by 50 per cent from 1.81 million letters to 2.72 million.
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