Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) director-general Francis Wangusi said the new prefix that starts with 01 has the capacity to handle 100 million subscribers, which is more double the current mobile phone users.
Safaricom applied and was allocated two million lines with the prefixes of 0110 and 0111 while Airtel has been offered 0100, 0101 and 0102.
Airtel has been offered three million of the new numbers and it comes at a time when the firm has grown its subscriber numbers faster than rival operators.
Safaricom #ticker:SCOM and Airtel subscribers will start using a new mobile number prefix after exhausting the existing ones, including 0722, 0723, 0733 and 0734.
Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) director-general Francis Wangusi said the new prefix that starts with 01 has the capacity to handle 100 million subscribers, which is more double the current mobile phone users.
“In view of the emergence of new technologies and numbering resource requirements it has become necessary to introduce the new 01 prefix also with a capacity of 100 million,” said Mr Wangusi during the launch of the new prefix yesterday.
Safaricom applied and was allocated two million lines with the prefixes of 0110 and 0111 while Airtel has been offered 0100, 0101 and 0102.
Airtel has been offered three million of the new numbers and it comes at a time when the firm has grown its subscriber numbers faster than rival operators.
Airtel’s subscriber market share jumped to 23.4 per cent at the end of last December, from 14.9 per cent in September 2017 while Safariom’s fell to 63.3 per cent compared with 71.9 per cent in the review period.
The gains by Airtel, the second biggest operator in the country, have been sustained by an aggressive hunt for subscribers.
Telkom Kenya did not apply for the new prefix due to the planned merger with Airtel.
Airtel said in February it had agreed to merge with the number three operator.
Mr Wangusi said the new prefix was necessitated by the increasing demand for SIM cards, mobile data, and machine-to- machine communications and other technologies that require telecommunication numbers in the country.
The new numbers will also be allocated to operators of land fixed numbers (landlines), premium rate numbers, toll-free numbers, and short codes, among others.
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