Telco operator Safaricom slightly lost its market share but maintained an unassailable lead in the number of people using its mobile money service M-Pesa.
According to the latest statistics from the Communication Authority of Kenya, the firms's market share in mobile subscriptions stood at 64.8 per cent recording a 0.3 percentage points decline.
Safaricom had 35,607,302 subscribers in March 2020 up from 35,335,107 in December 2019 recording a slow growth of 1.2 per cent.
The firms' major rival Airtel gained by 0.7 percentage points to post 26.6 percent market share recording a 4 per cent increase in mobile subscribers.
Airtel subscribers grew from 14,118, 569 in December 2019 to 14,682,293 in March 2020.
Telkom Kenya lost 0.4 percentage points to post a market share of 5.8 percent with 3,190,661 subscribers while Equitel's market share remained unchanged at 3.1 percent with 1,726,372 subscribers.
Safaricom's home fibre popularity is however on the rise among Kenyans accounting for 33.1 per cent of the market share with 165,810 subscribers.
Wananchi Group Kenya however, is still leading with 35 per cent market share with 175,433 internet subscribers.
Jamii Telkom comes third taking 15.6 per cent of the market share.
During the third quarter of the FY 2019/20, the number of registered active mobile money subscriptions stood at 29.1 million and the number of active mobile money agents stood at 202,102.
In terms of market shares for mobile money subscriptions, M-Pesa retained the highest market share of 98.8 per cent, whereas Airtel Money and T-Kash recorded market shares of 1.1 and 0.05 percent respectively.
The total outgoing local mobile voice traffic increased by 2.3 percent during the period under review to post 15.3 billion from 14.9 billion minutes posted last quarter.
On-net traffic stood at 13.5 billion from 13.2 billion minutes recorded last quarter.
Similarly, off net and mobile to fixed traffic increased by 1.4 per cent and 7.6 percent to post 1.7 billion and 15.8 million minutes respectively.
The high on-net traffic per call is attributed to the fact that operators offer lower calling rates within their network as compared to across other networks.
Airtel Networks Limited subscribers recorded the highest duration of on-net minutes per call at 4.0 minutes, whereas Safaricom PLC recorded the least number of off-net minutes per call at 0.9.
Traffic originating from other countries decreased by 4.7 percent during the period under review to stand at 137.8 million minutes, whereas voice traffic terminating in other countries increased by 6.0 percent to post 118.0 million minutes.
International traffic within EAC member countries has continued to decline over time, owing to implementation of the regional One Network Area initiative, since 2014 that resulted in lowering of roaming voice charges within ONA member countries.
Consumers from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan prefer to roam while visiting either of the countries rather than buying new SIM Cards to make international calls because of the fair calling rates within the One Network Area region.
During the period under review, internet subscriptions dropped by 0.7 per cent to stand at 39.3 million from 39.6 million subscriptions reported in quarter two.
This is mainly attributed to the decline in the number of mobile subscriptions posted by Telkom Kenya Limited during the quarter as a result of measures taken by the company to scale down on investments in anticipation of the proposed Airtel-Telkom merger although this has since changed.
Mobile data subscriptions for Safaricom PLC also declined during the period under review following stiff competition from other operators such as Airtel Networks Limited that reviewed their Vuka Pay as You Go tariff for mobile data from Sh4/MB to Sh2.3/MB during the reference period.
However during the period under review, Safaricom recorded the highest market share in mobile data subscriptions at 68.8 percent whereas Equitel recorded the least market share at 0.4 per cent.
The number of registered domains dropped from 91,940 reported during the previous quarter to 91,603 domains during the period under review.
"The drop is attributed to the closure of businesses and other non-governmental institutions in the country,"CAK said in the statement.