NAIROBI: According to the Communication Commission of Kenya's (CCK's) report, the number of mobile subscribers had increased by 5.99% (From 26.49 to 28.08 million subscriptions). However, there was a sharp decrease in the number of users making calls. The decline could be as a result of increased mobile tariffs from the major operator, this later led to decline in on-net tariffs and on the larger scale it attributed to a general decline in mobile traffic. “This decline could have been as a result of increased mobile tariffs by the major operator, Safaricom, during the period under review,” the report said. “As a result, there were significant decline in the operators' on-net traffic and consequently an overall decline in local mobile traffic,” the report added. Also noted was the increase in data usage. CCK estimated the number of Internet users rose to 21.55% from 14.3 to 17.38 million users during the review period. Reason could be the availability of low cost smart phones such as IDEOS and again many Kenyan's prefer to communicate through social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Skype rather than using voice calls. Danson Njue, research analyst for Informa Telecoms and Media stated: “Kenya has four submarine cables, which have provided huge bandwidth to service providers, enabling them to introduce fast and reliable broadband services to customers, hence growing the data market.”
