Safaricom grows its share of voice traffic as subscribers talk longer

Safaricom has widened its market share of voice traffic, the latest quarterly report by the industry regulator shows. 

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) report for the three months to September shows that Safaricom carried the highest voice traffic at 8.2 billion minutes, followed by Airtel’s 1.7 billion.

Orange connected 842 million minutes of voice calls and Equitel 25 million calls.

Subscribers of the four mobile firms made longer calls, increasing their monthly minutes of usage to 95.8 minutes up from 85.6 minutes recorded in the previous year.

Safaricom increased its voice traffic market share to 75.9 per cent up from 68.8 per cent registered in the last quarter.

Airtel dropped its market share to 16.2 per cent from the previous 20.2 per cent. Orange Kenya also shed its market share to 7.6 per cent up from 10.8 per cent.

Equitel (Finserve Africa) retained a market share of 0.2 per cent. CA says Safaricom, Airtel, Orange and Equitel subscribers made a total of 10.8 billion minute calls in the review quarter, up from eight billion minutes, representing a growth of 35 per cent.

“This was as a result of special offers and promotions carried out by the operators during the quarter under review,” said the CA report.

Local traffic calls to other networks (off net) grew by 0.5 per cent during the quarter under review to 1.21 billion minutes.