Telkom Kenya has lost its position as the country’s third-largest mobile operator, slipping behind Finserve’s Equitel after multiple disconnections, service outages, and sustained subscriber churn.
New data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows Telkom’s active mobile subscriptions fell to 868,788 by June 2025, down almost 40% from about 1.4 million a year earlier. Finserve’s Equitel now claims third place with 1.5 million subscriptions, while Safaricom remains the market leader with 49.9 million users, and Airtel follows with 23.7 million.
The drop underscores the high cost of network failures in a market where scale drives revenue. It also shows how fast a carrier can lose relevance when debt and poor service converge.
Telkom Kenya’s network deterioration started when American Tower Corporation (ATC) disconnected nearly 900 of Telkom’s masts in 2023 over KES 7.1 billion ($55 million) in unpaid lease fees. The switch-off triggered a coverage collapse, and Telkom admitted that it severely degraded its service in several parts of the country. Customers quickly migrated to rivals, with Safaricom and Airtel absorbing most of the traffic.
The Communications Authority of Kenya’s quality of service (QoS) report for the 2023/24 financial year gave the operator a score of 55% in end-to-end drive tests, far below the mandatory 80% threshold. Safaricom scored 86% and Airtel hit 80%, meeting regulatory standards. High call failure rates and patchy data availability left Telkom’s user base more vulnerable to defection once the network crisis hit.
Telkom Kenya lacks a safety net, with its mobile money platform, T-Kash, holding a virtually 0% market share, leaving it without the payments ecosystem that keeps rivals’ customers tied to their networks. Safaricom’s M-PESA and Airtel Money lead the mobile money market with over 99% market share.
Falling to fourth place puts Telkom in a difficult position because it now risks losing the scale needed to raise capital or attract the kind of strategic investor that could fund a 4G and 5G rebuild. The government’s buy-back of the operator, once floated as a path to stability, has stalled.
Telkom Kenya still owns substantial infrastructure and strategic assets, including fibre backbones, subsea cables, landing stations, and data centres, which give it potential scale and bargaining power. It owns over 4,000 kilometres of its terrestrial fibre cabling, and it runs and manages multiple undersea cables (TEAMS, LION2, EASSy, DARE-1, PEACE) through stakes and landing operations.
Mark your calendars! Moonshot by is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Meet and learn from Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Get your tickets now: moonshot..com
