Mobile operator Finserve, owned by Equity Bank, has lost market share after a revision of its subscriber base to only include those active in the past 90 days, according to Kenya's Communication Authority's second quarter report for the year 2016/17 (October to December 2016).

Finserve recorded 1.4 million subscribers this quarter, down from 2.2 million subscribers in the previous quarter (July - September 2016) losing 34.5% of its subscribers. The company's market share stood at 3.8%.

"Finserve Africa Limited lost 2.1 percentage points of market share during the quarter under review to stand at 3.8 per cent. This was mainly attributed to the revision of data by the service provider during the quarter under review," the CA said.

According to the CA report, internet subscription in the country is on a plateau with a small uptake of internet users.

"During the quarter under review, the number of subscriptions grew slightly to stand at 26.6 million subscriptions up from last quarter's 25.6 million subscriptions. Subsequently, there was a nominal growth on estimated Internet users of 5.2 percent to stand at 39.6 million up from 37.7 million users reported at the end of the previous period," stated an excerpt from the report.

However, the terrestrial internet subscription experienced a rise of 87.7%.

"Terrestrial wireless data subscriptions increased during the quarter under review to register 29,724 subscriptions up from 15,835 subscriptions recorded during the previous quarter," the report stated.

Fixed fibre optic subscriptions grew also by 18% during the quarter. Fibre optic subscription stood at 39,255 from 33,269 in the previous quarter.

Safaricom still holds the number one spot on mobile subscription (71.2%), mobile internet subscription (67.5%) and mobile money subscriptions (67.4%).

In the first quarter report for the year 2016/17 (July - September 2016), Orange Telkom also revised its subscriber numbers to comply with global industry standard and this also knocked its subscriber base down from 5.2 to 2.9 million.