Phone operators losing users to Facebook, WhatsApp

Telecom and mobile service operators in Kenya are losing billions of shillings in revenue to as over-the-top service providers take a larger share of communications services.

The latest report from the Communication Authority of  Kenya (CA) indicates services such as WhatsApp and Facebook, which provide connectivity to users for free now take up a big chunk of services such as SMS that mobile network operators traditionally billed for revenue.

According to the report, the absolute number of SMSs sent across the main networks rose by 17 per cent to 66.8 billion in the 2017/2018 financial year compared to the previous year. 

However, the total number of messages sent per subscriber has gone down from 156 per month in the 2016/2017 financial year to 108 this year. For mobile service providers, this represents a 30 per cent drop in the SMS earnings monthly per subscriber.

Data services

This revenue shortfall was compensated by huge uptake in voice and data services, with consumers spending more time on voice calls than they did in the last financial year.

According to CA, the average mobile phone subscriber spent 102 minutes per month speaking on their mobile phone this year from 88 minutes recorded in the 2016/2017 financial year.

Airtel also recorded the biggest gain with voice traffic more than doubling from 5.7 billion in the 2016/2017 financial year to 12.3billion last year. This has since pushed Airtel’s share of the voice market from 25 per cent to 28 per cent over the same period of time.

Its overall market share grew from 15 per cent last year to 21 per cent at the end of June 2018 while Safaricom's shrunk from 72.6 per cent to 65.4 per cent over the same period. The total value of transactions made during the period hit 1.9 trillion.