Safaricom has replaced Wananchi's Zuku fibre service as the leader in Kenya's fibre market, according to a new report by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA).

The quarterly report (July - September 2019) shows that Safaricom garnered 154,603 subscriptions to command a 34% market share, while Wananchi Group secured a 33.3% share of the market with 151,548 subscriptions.

In the previous quarter (April - June 2019), Safaricom had 137,824 subscriptions while Wananchi Group had 146,349 subscriptions.

Safaricom has embarked on an aggressive campaign to net new subscriptions within the East African country.

In its half year results (six months ending September 2019) released in November 2019, the company reported that its fibre cable covered 300,000 homes.

Overall, there is an increase in internet users in the country according to the report.

The CA cited affordable smartphones, data plans and the growth of 4G services as contributors to the growth.

The regulator stated: "During the quarter under review, the total data/internet subscriptions rose by 4.1 percent to 52.0 million, from 49.9 million reported in the previous quarter. Mobile data subscriptions accounted for 99.3 percent of total data subscriptions."

Mobile money subscriptions

In this report the CA revised its standard for reporting on mobile money, opting to exclude Equitel Money.

The CA said, "The Authority in the July-September 2019 statistics has revised its data on mobile money services, with the exclusion of data on Equitel Money, which is a mobile banking service as opposed to a mobile wallet service offered by telecommunications service providers."

The shift has seen the decrease of mobile money transaction statistics as well as mobile commerce numbers.

Mobile commerce transactions now stand at 425.38 million compared to the last quarter figure of 591.53 million, representing a 28% drop.

Mobile money transfers also dipped 19.3% recording a value of Kshs 1.76 trillion compared to Kshs 2.18 trillion recorded last quarter.