Safaricom Continues to Hold Top Spot in Fixed Data Subscriptions

Data about the ICT industry in Kenya for the first quarter of the 2021/2022 FY is out. The period started from July to September 2021.

We have since looked into the data and established a number of trends from the information published by the CA.

For instance, it emerged that SIM card subscriptions dropped because some Kenyans are struggling to pay online loans, so their SIMs were dormant during the review period.

At the same time, it was established that M-PESA is still leading the mobile money space, with 98.5% in mobile money subscriptions. This means that the likes of T-Kash and Airtel Money have no space to compete. M-PESA has also made it easier for Kenyans to access other fintech-related services, including ease of access to loans offered by digital credit providers.

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The last piece of information we noted from the report is that Kenyans still access local networks using feature/dumbphones the most. As of September 2021, there are more feature phones than smartphones at 33 million versus 26 million.

Fixed Data and Broadband Services

Over the period under assessment, the highest numbers of data subscriptions were on data speeds between 2 Mbps and 10 Mbps.

However, data speeds equal to or higher than 100 Mbps recorded the lowest number of subscriptions, but there is a reason for that. Anything higher than 20 Mbps in Kenya is very expensive, so only a few customers can afford to buy such plans. For instance, Safaricom’s Home Fibre Gold package (40 Mbps) costs more than KES 12,000 (about USD 100), which is even higher than what leading economies charge.

The data also reveals that the majority of customers use fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, followed by cable modem and fixed wireless.

Overall, there are 768,501 fixed and broadband subscriptions in Kenya as of September 2021.

Below is a summary of fixed data subscriptions per operator for the period under the review:

Safaricom was late in the party, but it has since overtaken Zuku (Wananchi), which was on top of the space in terms of fixed data subscriptions for quite some time.