NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 23 – Telkom Kenya lost 721,348 subscribers in the quarter ended June 2022 as the ongoing sim card registration by the industry regulator saw the telco deactivate subscribers with incomplete records.
According to the Q4 2021-22 report released by the Communication Authority, Telkom’s subscribers stood at 3,422,345 in the period, down from 4,143,693 subscribers in Q3.
On the contrary, the telco’s competitors Safaricom and Airtel recorded an increase in subscribers during the period as their customers complied with the registration exercise.
Safaricom grew its subscribers to 42,534,682 from 42,440,378 in the previous quarter, while Airtel on the other hand grew its subscribers to 17,046,982 from 16,728,597.
Equitel has 1,397,416 subscribers while Jamii Telecommunications had 272,392.
With the deactivation, the active mobile subscriptions declined to 64.7 million in the quarter up from 64.9 million in the preceding period, translating to a mobile penetration of 130.9 per cent.
This is as the October 15 deadline issued by the industry regulator for subscribers to validate their registration details nears.
During the reference period, Safaricom recorded the highest market shares in domestic mobile voice and SMS at 90.3 and 66.3 per cent, respectively.
Jamii Telecommunications Ltd recorded the least market shares at 0.0 per cent.
Meanwhile, the report notes that mobile money subscriptions stood at 37.2 million by June 30, representing a penetration level of 75.3 per cent.
In the period, there were 1.1 billion person-to-person transfers amounting to Sh1.1 trillion. On the other hand, the value of deposits stood at Sh1.4 trillion.
As of June 30 2022, there were 59.7 million mobile devices connected to mobile networks with feature phones and smartphones accounting for 32.9 and 26.8 million, respectively.
The penetration rates for feature phones and smartphones computed as a percentage of the total population were 66.6 and 54.3 per cent, respectively.
The total number of data/Internet subscriptions went up by 2.3 per cent to reach 47.6 million, whereas the number of broadband subscriptions recorded a slight drop of 0.5 per cent to post 30.1 million, the data shows.
During the period, 3G broadband subscriptions stood at 11.7 million consuming 73.1 million (GB) of data, while the 4G mobile broadband subscriptions consuming 208 million worth of data.
There were 92.8 million cyber threat incidences received by the National Kenya Computer Incidence Response Team (National KE-CIRT) during the period, with 1.9 million advisories issued to various targeted stakeholders.
The volume of domestic letters and courier items rose by 3.8 and 5.0 per cent to stand at 290,910 and 1.1 million items, respectively.
