5G has made interesting progress in the past two years with Safaricom leading the way and now Airtel joining the bandwagon. The latest sector statistics from ICT regulator CA Kenya shows we have 299,904 users on 5G.
5G started being tested in early 2020 by Safaricom. Kenya’s leading telco went ahead and rolled out the new network in October last year after two years of testing. CA Kenya didn’t specify which of the 300K users are on which network but we can assume that those are Safaricom users.
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Last month, Airtel announced that they had acquired 5G spectrum to fully roll out 5G in Kenya and that they will target specific towns in the country in the public rollout.
5G adoption has been made easier by smartphone companies making their devices more affordable – with options ranging from flagships to midrange smartphones under 35K.
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4G network subscriptions still hold dominance sitting at 20.1 million subscriptions while 2G and 3G follow closely at 15.9 million subscriptions and 11.1 million subscriptions respectively. The total number of mobile data and internet subscriptions sits at 47.8 million subscriptions.
The total number of mobile(SIM) subscriptions sits at 65.7 million.
In terms of operators, Safaricom leads the pack with a 66% stake in mobile(SIM) subscriptions. Airtel and Telkom Kenya follow second and third with 26.3% and 4.9% respectively. Equitel and JTL close the round at 2.3% and 0.5% respectively.
Mobile money agents increased to 318, 607 from 307,928. Mobile money subscriptions grew from 37.4 million to 38.7 million as well.
Safaricom’s MPESA leads when it comes to mobile money subscriptions at 98.8% while Airtel Money and Telkom’s T-Kash get the rest of the pie at 3.1% and 0.1%.
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When it comes to mobile broadband subscriptions, Safariom reigns supreme at 65%. Airtel and Telkom follow closely with 27.9% and 5.6% respectively. Equitel and JTL record 0.6% and 0.8%.
The total amount of pre-paid subscriptions sits at 64,446,162 which is 98% of total SIM subscriptions while post-paid recorded 1,291,002 mobile subscriptions which is 2% of total SIM subscriptions.
| Operator | Pre-Paid | Post-paid |
|---|---|---|
| Safaricom | 41,974,326 | 1,186,379 |
| Airtel | 17,546,839 | 91,668 |
| Telkom | 3,069,495 | 12,955 |
| Equitel | 1,522,917 | |
| JTL | 332,585 |
Feature phones are still popular with CA reporting 33,618, 061 devices(68.1%) in use in comparison to 29,742,690 smartphones(60.2%).
Safaricom controls the majority of the market share when it comes to Domestic Voice and SMS traffic at 65.9% and 89.2% respectively. Airtel follows closely at 32.2% and 10.4% as well.
Fixed data subscriptions are still led by Safaricom which has a 46.1% market share with 372.9K subscriptions while WAanacnhi(ZUKU) follows in second with 31.1% with 251.3K subscriptions. Poa Internet comes in third at 14.9% with 120.2K subscriptions.
