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Airtel gains voice market share from rivals in three months as calls surge

Thursday, March 14, 2024 — updated on August 22, 2024 - 2 min read

A front view of an Airtel shop. File | Shutterstock

By Brian Ambani

Business Reporter

Nation Media Group

Thank you for reading businessdailyafrica.com

Airtel Kenya grew its share in the voice market by one percentage point in the three months to December 2023, eating into the shares of its main rivals Safaricom and Telkom Kenya.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) data shows Airtel increased its voice share to 36 percent during the quarter up from 35 percent in the preceding quarter.

As a result, the voice share of market leader Safaricom fell from 64 percent to 63.3 percent while the share of Telkom also fell from one percent to 0.5 percent.

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During the period, the volume of local mobile calls increased by 6.1 percent to 23.6 billion minutes up from 22.2 billion minutes reported in the preceding quarter.

“The significant increase is attributed to the long school holiday coupled with the festive season which had subscribers communicating for longer periods,” said the CA.

Stiff competition from Airtel has seen Safaricom gradually lose a significant share of the voice market to its main rival. Safaricom’s share of the voice segment stood at 76.8 percent in the quarter to March 2016 but has since declined to the current 63.3 percent.

The telco’s revenue from voice has suffered in recent years amid the rapid uptake of mobile money payments.

In the half-year period to September, Safaricom’s voice revenue took a hit of three percent, dropping to Sh38.7 billion.

During the quarter to December 2023, Airtel also recorded the highest on-net minutes per call with calls within its network lasting an average of 2.8 minutes due to cheaper call rates.

Read: Airtel eyes 1000 network sites next year in expansion bid

This was followed by Finserve (Equitel) whose customers made calls lasting an average of 2.2 minutes on its network and Safaricom whose on-net calls had an average duration of 1.6 minutes.

At the same time, domestic SMS traffic grew by 15.6 percent to 14.1 billion messages, from 12.2 billion messages posted in the preceding quarter.

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