Information Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru (PHOTO: Standard) By Frankline Sunday |
NAIROBI, KENYA: Kenya has often been hailed as a country that stands out in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of mobile connectivity and usage. This has largely been attributed to the runaway success of M-Pesa and the mobile money service that has developed around the country’s high adoption of ...mobile.
ALSO READ: New content rules for broadcasters During a TV interview last week, ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru alluded to this when asked why the State portal Ajira was showing little evidence of traction among users. “Kenyans didn’t understand SMS in the beginning if you remember,” said Mucheru.
“Not to say there was a problem but when you introduce something new, it takes time. Now Kenyans SMS more than people in New York.” This claim is untrue. Data from the industry regulator Communications Authority of Kenya indicates that the total number of SMSs sent through four main service providers over the past year cumulatively stood at 58.4 billion.
Safaricom commanded the lion’s share accounting for 55.8 billion of all the SMSs sent with Airtel, Telkom and Finserve recording 2.3 billion, 265 million and 36 million of the text messages sent during the same period of time respectively. This divide between the total number of mobile phone subscribers in the country recorded at 41 million translates to approximately 1,424 SMSs sent by each Kenyan in a year.
This, however, includes SMSs sent by utility companies and promotional SMSs - meaning the actual figure of SMSs sent by Kenyans could be lower. When compared to the United States, however, there is a stark difference in the volumes of SMSs sent. According to the US-based CITA, an industry trade association representing US telecommunications companies, the volume of SMS traffic in the US in 2016 stood at 1.66 trillion.
ALSO READ: Controversial multi-billion mall opens in Kisumu This marked a 12 per cent drop from the 1.89 trillion messages sent out across the country during a similar period in 2015 with the decline associated to the growth of smartphones and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook messenger.
Additional data from CITA and the Federal Communication Commission further indicates that the number of mobile phone subscribers recorded over the same period of time stood at 395.9 million. This roughly translates to about 4,773 text messages sent by every American over 2016. This is three and a half times the number of SMSs sent by Kenyans.
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