Vodafone Ghana has recorded a sharp decline in its subscriber base following years of trying to lure millions of Ghanaians following the British company’s rebranding efforts, according to the country’s latest telecommunication stats.

Statistics for the period ending July 2012 from Ghana’s National Communication Authority (NCA) have revealed that Vodafone, which has been gaining subscribers since it entered the West African country in 2009, experienced its first subscriber base decline from 4,819,700 in June, 2012 to 4,758,272.

Since the rebranding from Ghana Telecom (GT) to Vodafone on 16th April 2009, the British telecom giant loss 61,428 subscribers leaving it with 20.1% of the Ghanaian market share, which is a 0.5% fall from 20.6% market share a month ago.

Vodafone has a 70% stake in the company, while the Ghanaian government has a 30% share.

Other operators’ results

According to the NCA figures, Tigo Ghana gained 145,911 subscribers to reach 3,699,185.

With the gain further in July, Tigo commands a 15.6% market share of the total mobile subscription base of 23,658,697. This is a marginal increase of 0.4% from the 15.2% market share in June this year.

Furthermore, MTN had a marginal increase and maintained its position as the market leader with a subscriber base of 10,828,585, representing 46% of the country’s total market share.

The telecom market leader however lost 0.2% subscribers to its competitors.

Meanwhile, Airtel Ghana also increased its subscriber base to 3,037,336, representing 12.8% of the total market share, but dipping 0.1% dip in June.

Glo Mobile Ghana which started operations four months ago continued amassing market shares from the other players, as it increased its subscriber base further to 1,152,474, bagging 4.9% of the total market share. It has subsequently recorded an increase of 4.2% from last month.

CDMA operator Expresso continued its subscriber losing spree. Expresso decreased its subscriber base to 182,845, which represents 0.8% of the total market share, a 0.17% dip.

Fewer fixed lines

The data from NCA also shows that there are currently 272,176 fixed telecom lines in the country as of July 2012 as compared to 276,568 in June, last month.

From the NCA subscriber base data ending July, Vodafone, the fixed line market leader recorded 261, 617 as against 266, 009 in June 2012.

This shows a dip of 4392 subscribers. Another fixed line operator, Airtel Ghana maintained its 10,559 for three consecutive months namely May, June, and July, all this year.