In Kenya, 4G penetration is still very low and at the moment you can only get it if you are on Safaricom. Airtel Kenya has expressed interest in rolling out 4G LTE but the company has never come around to do so. This leaves Safaricom to enjoy this monopoly even as we see more and more manufacturers bringing their 4G enabled devices into the country.
As we wait and see when the other telcos will embrace 4G, Safaricom is reporting that there are currently 700,000 4G enabled devices on its network. The company announced this as it announced its Full year results for the 2015/2016 financial year ending March 31 2016. The company also revealed that the total number of people on its network using both 3G and 4G stands at 7.9 Million.
Still on 4G, Safaricom has reported that it now has 467 4G base stations around the country and this is an increase of 98% from the 2376 base stations it had during the same period last year. 3G base stations also saw a slight increase from 1943 last year to 2517 this year. This is quite a good move especially on the 4G part.
Total customer base on Safaricom grew by 7.8% and now stands at 25.2 Million. Commenting on this, Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore said, “Our continued focus on the three strategic pillars; putting customers‟ first, providing relevant products and enhancing operational excellence, has resulted in an 8% growth of our loyal customer base generating strong financial and commercial performance.”
As for actual profits, Ksh 38 Billion is what Safaricom is reporting. Yes, you read that right 38 billion which converts roughly to about $378,000,000. That is quite impressive especially for a Kenyan company.
Here are a few things that Safaricom also revealed when announcing the results.
Service revenue grew by 13.8% to Kshs 177.8bn.
Voice service revenue grew by 3.9% to Kshs 90.8bn.
Messaging (SMS) revenue grew by 10.6% to Kshs 17.3bn.
M-PESA revenue increased by 27.2% to Kshs 41.5bn.
19.8% increase in 30 day active M-PESA customers to 16.6m.
42.7% growth in mobile data revenue to Kshs 21.2bn.
21.5% increase in 30 day active mobile data customers to 14.1m.
Fixed service revenue growth of 22.0% to Kshs 3.8bn.
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