Airtel Kenya’s share of voice market drops by over 25%

Airtel Kenya’s share of voice market in three months to December 2019 dropped by over 25% after the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) noted that the telecoms operator had been expanding traffic numbers on its network.

According to CA’s latest report, Airtel has been filling numbers by adding both outgoing and incoming calls.

“The justification provided by the operator was that they had been summing incoming and outgoing on-net traffic in previous quarters instead of providing outgoing traffic only considering that ideally only outgoing traffic is billed,” CA says in the report. http://www.inversk.co.ke/sites/news-team/article/digital-lenders-association-of-kenya-suspends-late-payment-penalties/

In order to comply with the regulator, Airtel was impelled to review the way it measures voice traffic in the last three months of 2019, triggering the collapse of its market share.

Regulatory data show the telco’s share of voice fell to 29.2 percent in the period to December from 40.3 percent posted in the three months to September, the lowest since June 2018.

“The huge decline in on-net traffic was occasioned by revision made by Airtel Networks Limited, which resulted in a reduction on its on-net voice numbers by almost half, that of the last quarter.”

Previous data by CA shows that Airtel’s share of the local voice market has been on a steady rise from 12.1 percent posted in March 2017 to hit the 40.3 percent peak.

Airtel subscriber market share now almost matches its call traffic stake, a departure from the previous trend where the two set of data have been apart.

Its subscriber market share stood at 24.6 percent in September while the firm’s voice traffic stake was at 40.3 percent.