NAIROBI, Kenya June 24-The ongoing sim card registration exercise saw telcos lose 124,689 customers in the first three months of this year as the industry regulator commenced the drive to deactivate subscribers with incomplete records.
The latest data from the Communication Authority(CA) shows of active mobile (SIM) subscriptions stood at 64.9 million as of March 31 2022 from 65.1 million subscriptions recorded by the end of December 31 2021.
“The decline in SIM subscriptions is partly attributed to the ongoing SIM registration exercise during which a number of SIM cards have been deactivated,” said CA.
The drop saw mobile penetration drop by 2.5 percentage points to 131.4 million from 133.6million in December 2021.
CA at the beginning of the year had given mobile network operators until April 15 to deactivate subscribers with incomplete records as per the regulations but was forced to extend the deadline by six months to October 15 following public outcry.
Safaricom’s subscribers fell from 42.8 million to 42.4 million at the end of March, while Airtel Kenya registered an additional 303,198 subscribers with a total of 16.7million subscribers. Telkom Kenya registered no change in the number of subscribers.
Finserve and Jamii Telkom added 7,072 and 17,982 subscribers respectively in the period under review.
During the reference period, mobile money subscriptions grew from 35.2 million recorded at the end of December 2021 to 36.4 million subscriptions by end of March 2022 hence translating to a penetration rate of 73.8 per cent.
Domestic mobile voice traffic both on-net and off net declined during the quarter under review by 7.7 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively.
Even so, domestic SMS traffic increased to 10.9 billion during the referenced period from 9.7 billion messages reported during the preceding quarter.
Fixed data subscriptions recorded an increase of six per cent to hit 848,472, driven largely by an increase in uptake in fibre connections to homes and offices.
Safaricom PLC recorded the highest market shares in fixed data subscriptions at 35.8 per cent followed by Wananchi Group at 28.1 per cent, Jamii telecommunications came third at 20.4 per cent.
Total cyber security cases reported with the authority recorded a 38 per cent drop to 79 million as at March 2022, down from 129 million in December last year.
CA anticipates increased activity in the sector as the electioneering period nears considering that ICTs will be a major facilitator of the General Elections.
