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Kenya's Pre-Paid Users Decline As Post-Paid Subscriptions Increase(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Kenya's post-paid subscribers continued to record an increase while pre-paid users declined according to CCK's Second Quarter Sector Statistics Report for the period between October -December 2013. The report states that prepaid subscriptions declined by 1.2 per cent to stand at 30.7 million down from 30.8 million posted during the previous quarter while post-paid users increased by 22.9 per cent to start at 560,503 up from 455,983 recorded in the previous quarter. The figures indicate that whereas pre-paid subscribers decreased by 100,000, post-paid users on the other hand increased by 104,520. "The same period of the previous year had realized growth of 1.6 percent. Despite this growth in post-paid subscriptions, pre-paid subscriptions continued to account for the largest share of the total subscriptions at 98.2 percent during the quarter. Essentially the ratio of post-paid to pre-paid stood at 1:55 during the quarter," states the report. Moving to individual mobile network operators, Safaricom, Airtel Kenya and yuMobile all increased the number of their post-paid users while the number of subscribers using the Orange network decreased during the period under review. Safaricom's post-paid users increased to 431,425 from 332,582; Airtel Kenya's rose to 124,355 from 118,918 over the period while yuMobile saw its post-paid number increase to 1,572 from 1,323 recorded in September 2013. However, Orange's post-paid subscribers declined to 3,151 in December compared to 3,160 in September. Overall, the industry experienced a marginal increase in the number of mobile subscriptions during the quarter to post 31.309 million subscriptions up from 31.301 million recorded last quarter, which translates to a growth of just 0.02 per cent. "Compared to the same period in the previous year, a growth of 1.0 per cent was recorded. However, the growth rate in mobile subscriptions has slowed substantially quarter-on-quarter over the last two years with less than 2 per cent average quarterly growth," notes the report. Copyright CIO East Africa. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |