Players in Kenya's telco sector are recording mixed performance of the SMS service as Safaricom and Finserve (Equitel) take a hit, while Airtel, Telkom Kenya and Jamii Telkom record growth.
Latest industry figures show that messaging through all the networks dropped by 179.1 million to reach 12.2 billion in the three months between July to September.
In the period under review, domestic SMS traffic dropped by 1.4 per cent to record 12.2 billion from 12.4 billion messages posted in the previous quarter. The ratio of on net to off net SMS was 88:12.
Traffic under the Safaricom network recorded the largest drop of 190.1 million SMS to reach 10.9 billion from 11.1 billion in the previous quarter.
Currently, the telco commands 89 per cent of the SMS sent in the country.
Airtel on the other hand recorded an increase of 20 million SMS to reach 1.3 billion, Telkom Kenya recorded 11 million rise in text messages to 16,178,792.
SMSs under the Equitel platform dropped by 20 million to reach 5 million in the same period, while Jamii Telekom gained 102,000 text messages to 770,006.
According to Communications Authority's first quarter report for the financial year 2023/24, the drop has been attributed to growing popularity of messaging apps.
“The short messages per subscription per month continued to decline owing to stiff competition from other (OTT) messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and Signal, which continue to gain popularity following increased coverage in broadband,” CA said in the report.
On-net SMS (those that are sent from own network and received in the same network) still dominate the local scene accounting for 10.7 billion of those sent in the three months.
Off new, those from one network to a different one accounted for 1.5 billion of SMS sent.
In the full year period ended March 31, SMS revenue for Safaricom was 11.38 billion showing how crucial the service is to the telco.
By March this year Kenya’s second-largest telco Airtel Kenya had chipped away at Safaricom’s dominance in four out of the six major battlefronts including voice, mobile data and SMS markets over the past five years.
The drop in Safaricom’s dominance of the voice, mobile internet and SMS comes amid a push by Airtel to have the telco declared dominant.
But the Competition Authority has turned down Airtel’s plea, saying that Safaricom’s market share has declined in recent years and that competition remains healthy.
Airtel last year sought the support of Senators to compel CAK to declare Safaricom, the market leader, as the dominant player, saying it is the first step to addressing the perceived uneven operating environment.
CA data shows that Safaricom has, however, tightened its grip on mobile money through M-Pesa besides turning its eyes to the largely untapped fixed internet market for homes and offices.
