Internet & mobile penetration record growth according to CA report

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has released a report for the period January to March 2015 that maps out the Kenyan telecommunication sector.

Here are some of the key statistics that were released.

1. Internet users

Internet users in Kenya have increased to 29 million from the previous 26 million. A majority of these users, 18 million, access the Internet via mobile data (mobile phones & modems).

Consequently Internet penetration also went up to 71.7 percent from a previous 64.1 percent.

2. Mobile users

Mobile users in Kenya grew to 34.8 million which pushed mobile penetration to 85.5%.

Mobile users were divided as follows per telco

Safaricom – 23.3 million customers (Market share – 67.1%)
Airtel Kenya – 7 million customers (Market share – 20.2%)
Telkom Kenya (Orange) – 3.7 million customers (Market share – 10.8%)
Equitel (Finserve Africa) – 665,661 customers (Market share – 1.9%)

3. Mobile data

Mobile data subscriptions increased to 18.6 million with Safaricom leading the pack with 12 million users.

Safaricom – 12,147,353 users – (Market share – 65%)
Airtel – 3,448,107 users – (Market share – 18.5%)
Telkom Kenya(Orange) – 2,421,800 users (Market share – 13.0%)
Equitel (Finserve) – 665,661 users (Market share – 3.6%)

4. SMS traffic

The number of SMS messages sent during the period went down to 6.5 billion messages down from 7.4 billion messages. The SMS traffic reduction could be because of the growing popularity of messaging services like Whatsapp and Viber that use data.