Last week, the Communications Authority of Kenya published its latest Q2 Sector Statistics Report, covering the October to December 2025 quarter — the most recent data available on the state of the sector. That release presented a timely opportunity: to step back and compare three consecutive years of the same quarter’s data — October to December 2023, 2024, and 2025 — and establish not just where Kenya’s telecommunications sector stands today, but the structural trajectory that has delivered it here. 

This analysis covers ten trends of the market including mobile subscriptions, mobile money, broadband, device adoption, domestic traffic, tariffs, and fixed internet, and is interesting reading for anyone tracking the long-term direction of Kenya’s digital economy.

Five Structural Signals from 3 Years of Data

The most revealing number in the Communications Authority of Kenya’s Q2 Sector Statistics Reports is not the 78.4 million active SIM subscriptions, nor the 149.5 per cent mobile penetration rate. It is this: SMS messages sent per subscription per month have fallen from 70.4 in December 2023 to 61.1 in December 2025 — a 13.2 per cent collapse in per-user messaging engagement over just two years, happening precisely as smartphone penetration surged from 66.4 per cent to 92.9 per cent of the population across the same period. 

Those two trends are not a coincidence; they are causal, and they capture the single most important structural argument in this entire analysis. I have been tracking Kenya’s digital economy for over two decades, and by comparing the October to December quarter across three consecutive years we have something rare in this market: clean, like-for-like data that strips out seasonal noise and exposes the structural shifts beneath the surface. Here are the five structural signals:

— Active SIM subscriptions grew 17.5 per cent over two years, from 66.7 million in December 2023 to 78.4 million in December 2025, pushing mobile penetration to 149.5 per cent of the population.

— Mobile money subscriptions reached 51.4 million by December 2025, translating to a population penetration rate of 98.0 per cent — up from 75.1 per cent in December 2023 alone. The agent network expanded 53 per cent, reaching 501,399 registered agents.

— Smartphone penetration hit 92.9 per cent of the population, a 26.5 percentage point increase in two years. There are now 48.7 million smartphones connected to Kenya’s mobile networks, up from 33.6 million in December 2023.

— Fixed internet subscriptions expanded 85 per cent in two years, from 1.33 million to 2.46 million — the most under-reported growth story in Kenya’s telecoms sector, driven by a genuinely competitive multi-player market.

— SMS messages per subscription per month fell 13.2 per cent — from 70.4 to 61.1 — in a market that simultaneously added 11.7 million SIM subscriptions and 15.1 million smartphones. This is the OTT disruption signal, and it is already structural rather than cyclical.

So, what does this all mean? Here are three structural implications: 

— OTT messaging has not merely begun to disrupt traditional SMS — it has already done so, structurally and measurably. Total SMS volumes barely moved from 14.1 billion to 14.4 billion over the two-year period, even as the subscriber base grew by 17.5 per cent. The trajectory is irreversible without a fundamental rethink of how operators monetize the messaging layer.

— Mobile money at 98 per cent penetration is no longer a growth market measured by subscriber acquisition. The competitive battle has shifted permanently to revenue per user — lending, insurance, investment, and cross-border remittances — which explains why M-Pesa’s market share has fallen from 97.1 to 89.0 per cent in two years as Airtel Money climbed from 2.9 to 11.0 per cent. The services-depth era of mobile money has begun.

— The fixed internet market, growing 85 per cent with a competitive structure that now includes Poa Internet at 10.7 per cent and Starlink at 0.9 per cent from a standing start, deserves far more analytical and policy attention than it typically receives. This is where Kenya’s next wave of digital economy deepening is being built.

From these 5 signals and 3 implications, here are the 10 trends across each dimension of Kenya’s telecoms sector:

Trend 1 — Mobile SIM Subscriptions: Steady, But Structurally Changing

Kenya’s total mobile SIM subscriptions climbed from 66.7 million in December 2023 to 71.4 million in December 2024, reaching 78.4 million by December 2025. That represents cumulative growth of 17.5 per cent over the two-year period — solid, if not spectacular. More instructive than the raw subscriber count is the penetration trajectory: 131.9 per cent in December 2023, rising to 138.5 per cent a year later, and now sitting at 149.5 per cent. A penetration rate this far above 100 per cent confirms what most analysts already know: multi-SIM ownership is endemic in Kenya, driven by Kenyans who hold one SIM for voice and M-Pesa, a second for data, and sometimes a third for a specific operator’s bundle offer.

What the numbers do not show — but what is embedded in them — is the operator composition of that growth. Safaricom’s subscriber base has remained remarkably stable in percentage terms, with its market share at 65.9 per cent in December 2023, easing slightly to 65.2 per cent in December 2024 before recovering to 66.8 per cent in December 2025. Airtel Kenya, which many expected to make sgains as Telkom Kenya continued its long decline, has shifted between 29.0 and 30.1 per cent. Telkom Kenya’s trajectory is the most alarming in the operator landscape: its market share has halved from approximately 2.0 per cent in December 2023 to 1.0 per cent in December 2025, reflecting both subscriber churn and the ongoing institutional uncertainty around the operator.

The prepaid-to-postpaid ratio remains locked at 98:2 — a structural reality that continues to constrain the revenue sophistication of Kenya’s mobile operators and limits the premium service ceiling.

The 98:2 prepaid-to-postpaid ratio has barely shifted in years and remains one of the more significant structural constraints on operator revenue quality. As long as postpaid penetration stays this low, operators will continue to face yield compression from prepaid bundle competition, and the contract-based loyalty model that underwrites capital expenditure in more mature markets will remain out of reach. This is a conversation the industry is not having loudly enough.

Trend 2 — Mobile Money: The Most Consequential Number In Kenyan Fintech

If there is a single metric that best encapsulates the transformation of Kenya’s financial services landscape over this period, it is the mobile money penetration rate: 75.1 per cent in December 2023, 82.1 per cent in December 2024, and 98.0 per cent in December 2025. Near-universal mobile money penetration, measured as a proportion of total population, is not just a fintech milestone — it is an infrastructure event. It means that for practical purposes, mobile money is now as ubiquitous as mobile voice in Kenya.

The subscription numbers reinforce this. Mobile money subscriptions have grown from 38.0 million in December 2023 to 42.3 million in December 2024 to 51.4 million by December 2025 — an absolute increase of 13.4 million accounts, or 35.3 per cent, in just two years. To contextualize that figure: Kenya’s total population as of the Economic Survey 2025 stands at approximately 52.4 million people. We are approaching a scenario where essentially every Kenyan of economically active age has a mobile money account.

The agent network tells a supporting story. Registered mobile money agents grew from 327,162 in December 2023 to 395,366 in December 2024, reaching 501,399 by December 2025 — a 53 per cent expansion in agent infrastructure over the period. That growth pattern is consistent with a market still in active geographic expansion, not a saturated urban network grinding out the last few percentage points of penetration. The agent density increase suggests operators are investing seriously in last-mile distribution, particularly in peri-urban and underserved areas.

M-Pesa’s mobile money market share declined from 97.1 per cent in December 2023 to 89.0 per cent in December 2025 — the first sustained, statistically meaningful erosion of the platform’s dominance in years.

The competitive dynamics within the mobile money market are, for the first time in years, genuinely interesting. Safaricom’s M-Pesa held 97.1 per cent of mobile money subscriptions in December 2023. By December 2024, that had fallen to 91.0 per cent. In December 2025, it stands at 89.0 per cent. Airtel Money correspondingly grew from 2.9 per cent to 8.9 per cent to 11.0 per cent. These shifts matter. An 8.1 percentage point swing in mobile money market share over two years represents millions of accounts migrating or newly registering on non-M-Pesa platforms. Whether this reflects Airtel Money’s product improvements, pricing competitiveness, or simply the numbers behind a growing overall market in which Airtel is capturing a larger share of new entrants is a question that deserves more forensic investigation than the CA aggregate data alone can support. But the directional signal is unmistakable.

Trend 3 — Mobile Data & Broadband: 4G Everywhere, 5G Accelerating

Total mobile data subscriptions have grown from 51.0 million in December 2023 to 56.1 million in December 2024 and 62.0 million in December 2025 — an 84.4 per cent penetration rate at current population levels. But the more important story inside those aggregate numbers is the generational transition in connectivity technology. The data tells a story of an inexorable shift toward broadband-grade mobile internet, driven overwhelmingly by 4G adoption.

4G subscriptions moved from 26.2 million in December 2023 to 34.8 million in December 2024 to 44.2 million in December 2025 — an increase of 18.0 million 4G users over the two-year window, representing 68.7 per cent growth. 5G, while still small in absolute terms, has tripled from 586,684 subscriptions in December 2023 to 1,010,289 in December 2024 and 1,735,042 by December 2025. Meanwhile, 2G subscriptions have contracted from 14.5 million to 12.7 million to 10.4 million, and 3G from 9.7 million to 7.6 million to 5.7 million. The technology migration is clean, directional, and accelerating.

The consumption data is equally striking. Total mobile broadband consumption grew from 568.3 terabytes in December 2024 to 755.1 terabytes in December 2025 — a 12.0 per cent quarterly increase that compounds the longer-term trend of explosive data appetite. Average consumption per broadband subscription increased from 13.1 GB in December 2024 to 14.6 GB in December 2025, with 5G users consuming a remarkable 46.4 GB per month on average. That 5G figure — three times the overall average — reflects both the technology’s capacity headroom and the profile of early 5G adopters in Kenya, who are disproportionately heavy data consumers.

5G subscriptions tripled in two years, and 5G users now consume 46.4 GB per month on average — three times the network average — signalling a power-user segment that operators must design premium services around.

For operators, the implications are significant. The investment case for 5G network build-out in Kenya needs to be grounded not in consumer volume but in consumer value. If 5G users are consuming three times the data of the average broadband subscriber, they represent a disproportionate share of network load and, potentially, a disproportionate revenue opportunity if monetized through appropriate tiered plans. The current PAYG tariff structure — which we examine in detail later — does not yet reflect this differentiation effectively.

Trend 4 — Market Shares: Safaricom’s Gravity, and Airtel’s Quiet Gains

Market share concentration in Kenya’s mobile sector is a story that has been told many times. What is worth examining here is the texture of change over this three-year period, because the headline Safaricom dominance masks some meaningful movements underneath.

On SIM subscriptions, Safaricom has ranged between 65.2 and 66.8 per cent across the three December data points, while Airtel has oscillated between 29.0 and 30.1 per cent. In mobile broadband subscriptions, Safaricom has held 63.5 to 64.3 per cent, with Airtel at 32.0 to 32.1 per cent. These are not static numbers, but they are not dramatically changing either. The mobile broadband segment is where Airtel’s competitive position is actually strongest — its 32 per cent of broadband subscriptions versus 29.2 per cent of SIM subscriptions suggests that Airtel’s data-centric positioning is resonating with consumers seeking connectivity rather than the integrated financial-services ecosystem that keeps Safaricom’s SIM churn low.

The mobile money market share data, discussed in the previous section, represents the most dynamic competitive movement in the entire dataset. Finserve Africa’s Equitel, operating in the Fintech convergence space, has maintained a consistent 1.9 to 2.3 per cent of SIM subscriptions and a similar share of mobile broadband — a small but strategically important footprint given its banking-sector parent, Equity Group.

Trend 5 — Mobile Phone Devices: Smartphones Dominate

The device-level data is perhaps the most visually dramatic in the entire three-year dataset. Smartphones connected to Kenya’s mobile networks grew from 33.6 million in December 2023 to 41.5 million in December 2024 and 48.7 million by December 2025 — an absolute increase of 15.1 million devices in two years. Smartphone penetration, measured against population, has climbed from 66.4 per cent to 80.5 per cent to 92.9 per cent.

Feature phones, by contrast, have declined from 31.8 million to 30.6 million to 29.6 million across the same period — 6.9 per cent fewer feature phones on the network in December 2025 than there were in December 2023. Feature phone penetration has correspondingly contracted from 62.9 per cent to 59.3 per cent to 56.5 per cent. We are watching the feature-phone era close in real time.

92.9 per cent smartphone penetration in December 2025 means Kenya has effectively crossed the smartphone-majority threshold — with profound implications for OTT platform adoption, digital financial services, and operator revenue models.

The implications of near-universal smartphone ownership compound across every other dimension of the telecommunications sector. High-quality smartphone penetration is the prerequisite for meaningful 4G and 5G utilization, for OTT platform adoption at scale, for digital financial services deepening, for e-commerce, for digital health, for online learning. Every percentage point of smartphone penetration growth that we are documenting here is simultaneously an enabling factor for digital economy growth that will show up in GDP data and corporate revenue lines two to three years from now. Kenya crossed an important threshold in this period. The question now is whether the infrastructure investment and policy environment can keep pace.

Trend 6 — Domestic Voice & SMS Traffic: The OTT Disruption is Not Coming — It Is Here

This is the section of the analysis I want readers to sit with longest, because the numbers tell a story that the telecoms sector acknowledges in private but rarely confronts with full analytical rigour in public.

Total domestic mobile voice traffic has grown impressively across the three-year window: 23.6 billion minutes in December 2023, 27.4 billion minutes in December 2024, and 31.5 billion minutes in December 2025. That is 33.5 per cent growth in voice traffic over two years, driven by a larger subscriber base, longer calls, and the festive-season effect that the Q2 quarter consistently exhibits. This is traffic growth that operators can and should celebrate. But — and this is a significant but — the growth is concentrated in on-net voice traffic, which already accounted for 83.1 per cent of all minutes by December 2025. The ratio between on-net and off-net calls is becoming more lopsided over time, which reflects Safaricom’s gravity: when 66.8 per cent of SIM subscriptions are on one network, the statistical probability of any given call being on-net skews dramatically toward that operator.

The SMS data tells a completely different and far more concerning story for operators. Total domestic SMS traffic was 14.1 billion messages in December 2023. In December 2024, it was still 14.1 billion messages. In December 2025, it has barely nudged to 14.4 billion. In a market where mobile subscriptions grew by 17.5 per cent and smartphones surged by 45 per cent over the same period, essentially flat SMS traffic is a structural alarm signal. When you add more subscribers, give them better phones, connect them to faster networks, and their messaging volumes do not grow proportionately, it means something else is absorbing the incremental communication demand. That something is WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok DMs, Instagram Direct, and the expanding ecosystem of internet-based messaging platforms.

Mobile subscriptions grew 17.5% in two years. Smartphones surged 45%. Yet SMS volumes barely moved — from 14.1 billion to 14.4 billion. The messaging revenue story has already been disrupted.

The per-subscription data makes this structural dynamic even clearer. SMS per subscription per month fell from 70.4 in December 2023 to 66.0 in December 2024 to 61.1 in December 2025. That is a 13.2 per cent decline in per-user SMS engagement in just two years. At the same time, minutes of use per subscription per month increased from 117.8 to 128.1 to 133.9 — a 13.7 per cent increase in voice engagement per user. These two metrics moving in opposite directions, in a market with surging smartphone and 4G penetration, tell a coherent and unsurprising story: voice calls are being supplemented by OTT voice (WhatsApp calls, Google Meet, Zoom), but they have not yet been fully substituted in the way traditional SMS has been substituted by OTT messaging.

What does this mean for operators? In the near term, SMS revenue per subscriber will continue declining. The operators who have been most exposed to SMS revenue — particularly A2P (Application-to-Person) messaging for OTP authentication and bank notifications — will face pricing pressure as enterprises increasingly explore direct internet delivery of those messages via API. Telcos that have not yet built compelling OTT partnerships or MVNO data strategies are watching a meaningful revenue stream erode in real time, with no structural policy lever to stop it. The CA data does not show revenue figures, but the volume trends speak clearly enough.

Trend 7 — Minutes & SMS Per Subscription: The Engagement Paradox

Building on the previous section’s analysis, the minutes-per-subscription versus SMS-per-subscription divergence deserves its own dedicated treatment because it captures a paradox that is unique to markets at Kenya’s stage of digital development.

In mature markets — Western Europe, North America — OTT substitution has eroded both voice and SMS engagement simultaneously, as consumers migrate to WhatsApp voice calls, FaceTime, and Zoom rather than the PSTN, and to WhatsApp messages, Signal, and iMessage rather than SMS. In Kenya’s data, we are seeing something more nuanced: voice engagement per subscriber is rising while SMS engagement is falling. This suggests that for a significant cohort of Kenyan mobile users, cellular voice calls remain the preferred mode of real-time audio communication — because of reliability, ubiquity of access, and the cultural weight of voice calling in Kenyan communication norms — even as those same users have comprehensively migrated their text and media messaging to internet-based platforms.

The minutes-per-subscription trend rising from 117.8 to 133.9 over the period also reflects the structural growth of on-net calling as Safaricom’s network scale increases. On-net calling on large networks is effectively free or bundled at minimal cost, which encourages longer call durations. The average on-net call duration of 1.8 minutes and off-net of 1.3 minutes have remained static across the three periods, suggesting that the growth in MoU is driven more by call frequency than call duration. Kenyans are calling more often, not talking for longer. That is an important distinction for operators thinking about bundle design.

Trend 8 — Pay As You Go (PAYG) Tariffs: The Market’s Most Expensive & Most Affordable Options

The average Pay-As-You-Go tariff data in the CA reports is the closest thing we have to a published price transparency mechanism for Kenyan mobile consumers, and it consistently reveals a market with significant price stratification that the average consumer navigates largely by instinct rather than informed comparison.

On voice calling, Safaricom’s peak PAYG rate of KES 4.87 per minute has not changed across the entire three-year dataset — it is the most expensive voice rate in the market and has been so consistently. Safaricom’s off-peak rate of KES 2.50 per minute represents a meaningful 48.7 per cent discount to peak, offering price-sensitive consumers a legitimate optimization strategy if they time their calls accordingly. Airtel Kenya, at KES 2.93 per minute in December 2025 (up from KES 2.78 in the preceding two years), remains the most affordable option for off-net voice calling on a flat-rate basis. Telkom Kenya’s on-net rate of KES 2.73 per minute is the cheapest absolute rate in the market, though its diminishing subscriber base means that the probability of a Telkom-to-Telkom on-net call is increasingly low.

Safaricom peak voice at KES 4.87/minute is 66% more expensive than Airtel’s KES 2.93/minute. In a market where bundles dominate, this gap matters less than it once did — but for PAYG users, the pricing differential is substantial.

On data, the market has effectively converged around KES 4.50 to KES 4.87 per megabyte at the PAYG level, with Safaricom at the top end (KES 4.87/MB) and Airtel and Telkom at KES 4.50/MB. The industry average of KES 4.65/MB in December 2025 represents a marginal decline from the KES 4.59/MB average of December 2023 — a two-year improvement of essentially zero in real terms. This flatness in PAYG data pricing is an important policy signal: the PAYG market is not where competitive pricing innovation is happening. It is in bundle pricing, where the CA data offers limited visibility, and where consumers are making increasingly sophisticated trade-offs.

SMS pricing has been remarkably stable: KES 1.20/SMS for Safaricom and Airtel, and KES 1.15/SMS for Telkom, across all three years. In a world where WhatsApp messages are effectively free on a data bundle, the fact that PAYG SMS pricing has not declined is telling. It suggests either that operators believe PAYG SMS users are relatively price-inelastic, or that the effort required to restructure SMS pricing would not generate meaningful subscriber or revenue upside in a bundle-dominated market.

Trend 9 — Fixed Data Subscriptions: 85 Per Cent Growth in Two Years, & Starlink Has Arrived

The fixed internet market in Kenya has delivered its most impressive growth story in years, expanding from 1.33 million subscriptions in December 2023 to 1.72 million in December 2024 and 2.46 million by December 2025. That is 84.8 per cent cumulative growth over the two-year period — a rate of expansion that significantly outpaces the mobile market and signals a structural deepening of home and office broadband connectivity that has considerable implications for digital services consumption patterns.

The technology composition of fixed subscriptions reveals a market in active transition. Fibre-optic subscriptions accounted for 1.38 million of the 2.46 million total in December 2025, representing the backbone of the fixed broadband market. Terrestrial wireless — the technology underpinning many of the ISP players outside the top two — has grown significantly, reaching 857,912 subscriptions in December 2025. The satellite segment, at 22,513 subscriptions, is small in absolute terms but growing rapidly, with a 13.9 per cent quarterly increase recorded in Q2 FY2025/26.

Fixed internet subscriptions grew 85% in two years. Starlink, absent from the market in 2023, captured 0.9% of the fixed internet market by December 2025 — significant for a service that has been live in Kenya for less than three years.

The speed-tier distribution of fixed subscriptions tells a story of genuine broadband adoption rather than just line activation. In December 2025, 1,001,482 subscriptions — 40.7 per cent of the total — were at speeds between 10 and 30 Mbps, making it the largest single tier. A further 226,805 subscriptions were at 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, and 856 subscriptions were at speeds above 1 Gbps. The shift toward higher speed tiers over the period reflects both improved infrastructure and consumer willingness to pay for greater bandwidth, consistent with the work-from-home and online-learning trends that accelerated during and after the pandemic.

Trend 10 — Top 10 Fixed Internet Operators: A More Competitive Landscape Than It Appears

The fixed internet operator market in Kenya presents a more genuinely competitive picture than the mobile market, though it is still anchored by the dominant position of Safaricom with 34.9 per cent market share as of December 2025. The top ten operators by subscription count as at December 2025 are:

Safaricom — 858,394 subscriptions (34.9%)

Jamii Telecommunications (JTL/Faiba) — 494,150 (20.1%)

Wananchi Group (Zuku)— 272,802 (11.1%)

Poa Internet Kenya — 263,305 (10.7%)

Ahadi Wireless — 222,060 (9.0%)

Vilcom Network — 133,316 (5.4%)

Mawingu Networks — 92,016 (3.7%)

Starlink — 22,282 (0.9%)

Dimension Data Solutions East Africa — 21,536 (0.9%)

Vijiji Connect — 18,200 (0.7%)

What is remarkable about this market structure is the breadth of viable competitors at tiers two through five. JTL’s 20.1 per cent share makes it a genuinely competitive challenger — not a marginal player. Poa Internet Kenya’s 10.7 per cent share, built on an affordable home broadband model targeting mass-market urban consumers, represents a disruptive force in how the fixed market is being democratized. Ahadi Wireless, with 9.0 per cent of the market, has carved out significant share in the wireless fixed access segment. These are not trivial operators; they are reshaping the competitive dynamics of a market that was historically a two-player affair between Safaricom and Wananchi (Zuku).

Starlink’s appearance in this market is the entry worth examining most carefully. Given Starlink’s 22,282 subscriptions and 0.9 per cent market share as at December 2025, it’s not yet a volume player. However, Starlink represents something qualitatively different from every other operator in this list: it is the only technology in the market that can deliver broadband connectivity to locations with no fibre, no wireless tower, and no cable infrastructure. For the vast majority of Kenya’s land area that remains underserved or unserved by terrestrial broadband, Starlink is not competing with JTL or Wananchi — it is the only option. The 13.9 per cent quarterly growth in satellite subscriptions in Q2 FY2025/26 suggests that Starlink’s Kenyan subscriber base is on an accelerating trajectory, consistent with what I have been arguing since the service launched in Kenya in July 2023: its strongest use case is not urban consumers with fibre alternatives, but off-grid and underserved market segments where the premium pricing is a genuine trade-off rather than a luxury add-on.

The Structural Shifts That Will Define Kenya’s Digital Decade

Taken together, these 10 trends point toward a Kenya that is digitally maturing at a pace that consistently exceeds the expectations of those who have been tracking this market for only a few years. But maturity brings complexity, and several structural tensions are now visible in the data that were not apparent two years ago.

The OTT disruption of SMS is not a future scenario — it is a present reality that is visible in per-user SMS engagement declining 13.2 per cent over two years while smartphone penetration has surged. Operators who have not yet built a strategic response to OTT substitution — whether through data monetization, super-app positioning, enterprise services, or wholesale API plays — are running out of runway before this becomes a balance-sheet issue.

Mobile money’s near-universal penetration at 98 per cent raises a more interesting question than it might initially appear. A market at 98 per cent penetration is no longer a growth market by subscription count — it is a revenue-per-user and services-depth market. The battle for the next decade of mobile money value in Kenya will be fought on lending, insurance, investment, cross-border remittances, and merchant ecosystem play, not on account acquisition. The fact that Airtel Money has moved from 2.9 to 11.0 per cent of mobile money subscriptions in two years suggests the competitive architecture of that battle is already in motion.

The 5G story is still in its early chapters. Since there are 1.74 million subscriptions and they average consumption of 46.4 GB per month, the 5G user base is small but voracious. Operators need to think carefully about how they create monetizeable differentiation around 5G before the technology becomes commoditized into standard bundle pricing.

For the fixed internet market, growing 85 per cent in two years, is arguably the most under-reported success story in Kenya’s telecommunications sector. The emergence of a genuinely competitive tier-two and tier-three ISP market — anchored by Poa Internet’s mass-market play, Ahadi Wireless’s regional coverage, and Starlink’s off-grid accessibility — is changing the nature of broadband access in ways that will show up in productivity data, educational outcomes, and SME digitization metrics in the years ahead.

The data from three consecutive Q2 reports makes one thing emphatically clear: Kenya’s telecommunications sector is not static, and the operators, investors, and policymakers who treat it as such are reading the wrong version of the story. The version I find more compelling is the one told by the numbers above — a sector in active, structurally significant transition, where the winners of the next decade are being separated from the also-rans right now.

Data Sources

All data in this analysis is drawn exclusively from the Communications Authority of Kenya’s Second Quarter Sector Statistics Reports for Financial Years 2023/2024 (October–December 2023), 2024/2025 (October–December 2024), and 2025/2026 (October–December 2025). Population data references the Economic Survey 2025 figure of 52,428,290.