Kenya’s mobile telephony and Internet review for 2010-2011

                  

In brief

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) recent quarterly report for 2010/2011 confirms what we have known so far, that the recent price wars between Safaricom and Airtel have led to increased mobile line subscribers and reduced revenues for the telcos. Click here to access the report.

Overall teledensity rose to 56.9 per cent from 53.3 per cent in June 2010, with mobile services accounting for 55.9 per cent.

Mobile traffic and usage patterns

A total of 6.63 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks against 6.05 billion in the previous quarter, representing 9.6 per cent increase. Similarly, the number of voice minutes received on all mobile networks was 6.63 billion minutes, representing 97.5 per cent increase from the same period of the previous year. The number of SMS recorded during the quarter was 740 million text messages compared to 769.6 million text messages sent the previous quarter. This is attributed to the recent price wars between Safaricom and Airtel Networks, and which have featured recently in the Kenyan parliament where the government was concerned at the projected drop in tax revenues from the telcos amounting to KES. 5 billion (USD $ 62,500,000).

Internet traffic and usage patterns

The total number of internet subscriptions registered 4.3 per cent growth from 3.09 million in the previous quarter, Jun 2010, to 3.2 million in the quarter under review. The number of internet users was estimated at 8.69 million from 7.8 million users in the previous quarter. Broadband subscriptions increased from 18,626 subscribers in the previous quarter to 84,726 representing 0.97 per cent of the total internet subscriptions in the country, and is the primary driver towards the internet subscriptions.

Mobile operators continue to dominate the internet market with more than 98 per cent of the Internet market share being through mobile services

The international internet connectivity bandwidth recorded marginal decline from 20,384.12Mbps in the previous quarter to 20,209.56Mbps during the quarter under review. This was as a result of decline in VSAT connectivity.

Mobile tariffs

Mobile tariffs reduced significantly over the quarter registering an average of KES 2.65 (USD $ 0.033) for on-net calls per minute from KES 4.78 (USD $ 0.059) per minute in the previous period and KES 2.5 (USD $ 0.03) for post-paid subscribers at the end of the quarter under review.

This represents 33.4 per cent reduction on pre-paid tariffs and 55.5 per cent on post-paid tariffs from the previous period.

The tariff decline is attributed to an interconnection determination by the Commission during the period that saw mobile termination rates reduced to KES 2.21 (USD $ 0.028) from KES 4.42 (USD $ 0.055).

People Power! Internet Power and African Revolutions

 

 

 

 

 

The events in the last few weeks in Tunisia and Egypt have been very interesting to follow. Who would have thought that one day an African government would be overthrown in a revolution (Dignity Revolution) largely attributed to an Internet savvy generation.

Looking more closely at the events unfolding, one would not have failed to have noticed that this youthful chunk of the population has been exposed to modern cultures – hip hop, Facebook, YouTube, urbanization, technology etc. Now try and compare them against the old generation of leaders that are  deeply steeped towards spiritualism, corruption and short sighted policies that can be considered ultra conservative, and what you have is a time bomb waiting to explore. In this case modernity is viewed as as a self-liberating process, with technology that provides an opportunity to other cultures and worlds not previously accessible to them. To them the old generation is a major stumbling block to all that they aspire for, wish for and dream of attaining in their lifetime. At stake was a dictatorship so typical of Africa countries that had an overdue date stamp and had lost touch with its citizenry in the 21st century.

According to the 2010 CIA World Factbook, Tunisia’s estimated population in July 2010 was 10,589,025, with an age structure as shown below:

0-14 years: 22.7% (male 1,227,238/female 1,149,796)
15-64 years: 70.1% (male 3,701,661/female 3,652,322)
65 years and over: 7.2% (male 352,003/female 403,319) (2010 est.)

the total total median age is 29.7 years, representative of a country with a large population of its citizenry in the below 35 years that is evidently been Internet fed.

This is supported by statistics provided by Internet World Stats site that shows that there are were 3,600,000 Internet users as of June 10,  a 34.0% of the population penetration rate that places among the top African countries with the largest proportion of its citizenry on the net.

Further analysis of its social networking behaviourism of this youth by Socialbakers, a marketing consulting firm that specializes on Facebook usage, shows that there were a total of 2,066,340  Facebook users this month, which is 57.40% penetration of its Internet users! Interesting aspects of the age structure is revealed by analysis of the Socialbakers site as illustrated below:

As can be seen, 80% of these users are between 16-34 years, and you can begin now to understand what the so called “Generation Y” is capable of doing!

It will be even more interesting to watch the cascading effect of Tunisia’s revolution in Jordan and Kuwait, and any other Arab countries in the Middle East. Egyptians, under 30-years rule of Mubarak is undergoing cataclysmic changes in political spheres, and will perhaps make one day a fine reading on history of how modern or contemporary technologies revolutionize the world we live in.