Kenya’s mobile market has continued to grow steadily, supported by a mobile subscriber base of about 41 million by early 2018. Some market consolidation occurred following the acquisition by Airtel and Safaricom of Essar Telecom’s yuMobile business. While all network operators have invested in mobile technologies and infrastructure upgrades to support mobile data services, competition has nevertheless presented challenges to their profitability, with uneven revenue growth reported in recent years. Orange Group was the principal casualty of competition, leading it to sell its stake in Telkom Kenya. By contrast, Safaricom has seen very strong growth on the back of its popular M-PESA payment platform. This market dominance, however, encouraged the government to consider, and later dismiss, recommendations from a 2016 report that Safaricom split off its M-PESA business from its voice and data offerings.
To encourage the development of LTE services the government has pursued an open-access approach. Disputes centered on licence fees delayed the launch of LTE services by MNOs, though they continued to invest in infrastructure and technology upgrades using trial licences.
A number of MVNO licences awarded since 2014 have added to the competitive mix, with Equitel establishing a market share of about 4.6% by late 2017.
Safaricom, Bharti Airtel (formerly Zain, Celtel), Essar Telkom Kenya, Huawei Technologies, ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Networks, Mobile Pay (Tangaza Pesa), Zioncell Kenya, Finserve Africa (Equitel)
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Number of pages 38
Status Current
Last updated 25 Sep 2018
Update History
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