Kenya mobile phone subscribers rise to 8 million

By David Mageria

NAIROBI, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Kenya's mobile phone subscribers rose to about 8 million at the end of 2006 from 6.5 million in June after the country's two operators expanded coverage to rural areas and on special offers over the holiday season, industry officials said on Friday.

Leading firm Safaricom, a joint venture between state-owned Telkom Kenya and Britain's Vodafone (VOD.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it had 5.3 million subscribers at the end of 2006. Rival Celtel Kenya said its subscribers were approaching 3.0 million.

"We expect this to happen pretty soon because the uptake is extremely sharp," Michael Dabaly, Celtel Kenya's chief commercial officer told Reuters.

The company said it had netted 1 million customers in the last three weeks alone.

Celtel introduced a new tariff in December, offering a uniform rate of 16 Kenya shillings ($0.230) per minute irrespective of what network customers called.

Safaricom lowered its tariffs to 10 shillings per minute for the holiday season and on Friday it reduced its peak charges from 35 shillings to 20 shillings.

Kenyan mobile call charges have generally averaged at more than 30 shillings per minute.

Safaricom's head of corporate affairs Joseph Ogutu attributed the company's growth in subscribers in part to its latest drive to expand network to rural areas.