The number of internet subscribers in Tanzania has grown from 23.8 million recorded in 2018 to 31.1 million in 2022 according to the latest report by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA).
According to the report, the annual internet subscription during the past five years has grown at an average growth rate of 17% per year.
“Data traffic has grown at an average growth rate of 10% on usage per quarter from June to December
2022,” the report said.
Top 10 Internet Services with the Most Bandwidth Usage (In Gb)
During the quarter ending December 2022, the service that used more bandwidth (in GBs) was Facebook with a total of 90.01 trillion GBs which mostly is due to Facebook video service.
The second is YouTube with total of 34.97 trillion GBs, this was because video streaming services have shown a great consumption of bandwidth than other services.
Total sim-card subscription
Meanwhile the total sim-card subscriptions increased by 4% from 58.1 million subscription, in September 2022 to 60.3 million as of December 2022.
According to the report, Vodacom leads the market by having 30% of the market shares, followed by Airtel with 28% and Tigo with 26%.
“There is no operator with a significant market shares in terms of subscriptions, which signifies that there is a healthy competitions among the operators in retaining consumers and recruiting the new consumer,” the report said.
The report further shows that the second quarter of 2022/2023 experienced a significant increase of subscriptions with subscriptions reaching 2.2 million from 1.9 million recorded during the first quarter.
“The reason behind such increase may be associated by end of year festivals whereby many people like to communicate with families and friend around the world hence demanding new SIM cards, “the report said.
Despite the increase in subscriptions however, TTCL lost about 5,623 subscriptions in this quarter.
Dar es Salaam is leading with 10.5 million SIM Cards, followed by Mwanza with 3.8 million, Arusha with 3.7 million. Regions with lowest subscriptions are Unguja North (56,884) and Unguja South (88,176).