Telkom Kenya is now Kenya’s smallest mobile operator after two-year slide

Telkom Kenya has fallen to the country’s fifth-largest mobile operator, down from third place just two years ago.

Its subscriber base shrank to roughly 744,500 by December 2025, down from 1.34 million in December 2023, according to Communications Authority (CA) data. The decline marks one of the sharpest contractions among Kenyan operators over that period, as Equitel and Jamii Telecommunications both overtook it.

The decline came even as the broader market expanded. Over the same period, Safaricom grew to 52.3 million subscriptions and Airtel to 22.3 million, widening their lead, while Equitel and Jamii Telecommunications held or expanded within specific segments.

The shift points to a market that is no longer just led by a dominant incumbent but increasingly defined by scale at the top and clear positioning among smaller players.

Telkom has lost ground in absolute terms and slipped between these two ends of the market without a clear base to defend.

Part of the decline is tied to network performance. The CA’s quality-of-service data shows Telkom trailing competitors on call stability and availability, a gap that weighs more in a prepaid market where most users can switch providers at little cost.

In that environment, even small differences in reliability tend to translate quickly into churn, particularly among price-sensitive users, a segment Airtel targets aggressively.

Infrastructure constraints compound the problem. Telkom’s long-running dispute with American Tower Corporation (ATC) over tower access and outstanding fees has threatened site shutdowns and limited the operator’s ability to maintain consistent coverage.

That tension has made it harder to sustain network quality or expand capacity at a time when rivals have continued to invest, reinforcing a cycle in which weaker service feeds subscriber losses, which in turn constrain further investment.

At the same time, Telkom’s market position has become harder to define. Safaricom continues to anchor its dominance in network reach and its mobile money ecosystem, while Airtel has combined lower pricing with improving coverage to add millions of users since 2023.

Smaller operators have avoided direct competition by focusing on narrower use cases, with Equitel operating as the telecom arm of Equity Bank and Jamii Telecommunications targeting data-driven segments.

Telkom’s slide suggests that operators without either advantage face growing difficulty holding on to users as competition sharpens.