Airtel Tanzania races past Tigo in voice subscriptions

Dar es Salaam. It is now official that Airtel Tanzania has overtaken Tigo Tanzania as the second largest telecoms operator in terms of voice subscriptions, the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority’s quarterly report for the third quarter of last year shows.

The report - covering the period between July and September - says that Airtel Tanzania’s voice subscribers rose to 11.9 million, higher than Tigo Tanzania’s 11.6 million.

Vodacom remains on top of the list with 14.8 million voice subscribers as of last September. Airtel market share has also increased to 26.6 percent, higher than Tigo’s26.1 percent of Tigo Tanzania, while Vodacom remain dominant at 33 per cent of market share.

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Tigo started last year as the second largest telecom, in terms of voice subscribers, with 12.6 million subscribers while Airtel had 11.1 million subscribers.

Things changed in August last year, after Airtel Tanzania recorded 11.7 million voice subscribers, higher than Tigo which had 11.5 million subscribers.

According to TCRA report, during the third quarter of last year, Airtel Tanzania recorded an additional 337,688 subscribers while Tigo Tanzania added up 108,950 subscribers.

The report shows that Halotel Tanzania has maintained its fourth position with 4.3 million subscribers of ten per cent of voice subscription market share.

Zantel is the fifth largest with 1.1 million subscribers while TTCL and Smile were on the bottom of the list with 852,574 and 1,624 subscribers respectively.

The report shows that Airtel Tanzania has remained the cheapest when it comes into both on-net and off-net voice calling.

For on-net voice, Airtel charges Sh43, tax exclusive, per minute followed by Smile with Sh60 and Zantel with Sh130.

For off-net tariffs, Airtel is also cheapest with Sh43 per minute, followed by Smile and Zantel with Sh60 and Sh174 respectively.

For international calls (East Africa), Airtel Tanzania is the third cheapest at Sh750 per minute, behind TTCL with Sh600 and Tigo Tanzania with Sh739 per minute.

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