The Tanzania telecommunications space has the most number of operators in SADC. 5 mobile operators, with 4 commanding a 97% market share. It is the second biggest telecoms market behind South Africa looking at mobile subscribers and sits at the top for available internet capacity even though activated bandwidth is still lower than South Africa (The highest in the region)
Fixed and mobile network space
The mobile operator space in the Tanzania telecommunications market comprises 5 operators including Vodacom (30% market share), Airtel, Tigo (both at 27% market share each), Halotel at 13%, TTCL (3% market share), and Smile (0% market share). As of June 2023, the sector had a total of 64,088,651 mobile subscribers. In the last quarter of 2022, Tigo was the MNO with the largest increase in subscribers (885,349) with Smile, the MNO with the smallest market share losing 1,331 subscribers in the same quarter.
Over a period of 5 years, Tanzania has seen a 7% year-on-year increase in the number of mobile subscribers from 47,685,232 in 2019 to 64,088,651 in June of 2023, a 43% increase in mobile subscriptions. The telecom penetration rate has also gone up from 88% in 2019 to 101% in 2023 with 3G population coverage at 77% and 4G population coverage at 65%.
Mobile internet subscriptions stood at 33,967,699 in June 2023 with Smile being the only MNO offering mobile internet services exclusively. Over the past 6 years, there has been a 17% year-on-year increase in the number of total internet subscriptions (fixed and mobile) with a gain of 846,940.
The fixed network operator market share in Tanzania is dominated by TTCL. As of June 2023, TTCL had a market share of 97%, followed by Smile with 2% and Zantel with 1%. Subscriptions for fixed telecoms operators stood at 83,407 by June 2023 which was a decline from 84,696 recorded end of 2022. However, spread over a 5-year period, fixed subscriber numbers grew by 7,119 from 76,288 in 2019.
Infrastructure & Data Consumption
The number of mobile network base stations in the Tanzania telecommunications space has grown rapidly in recent years, from 4,593 in 2012 to over 15,000 in 2023. A majority of mobile network base stations in Tanzania are owned by the four major operators: Vodacom, Airtel, Tigo, and Zantel. These operators have been investing heavily in their networks.
The government has been investing in the telecoms sector in order to improve infrastructure and expand coverage. In 2021, the government launched the Universal Communications Service Access Fund (UCSAF), which is a government-funded program that provides subsidies to telecom operators to expand their networks in rural areas. The private sector has also been investing in the telecoms sector with Vodacom Tanzania investing US$200 million in its network in 2021.
Data consumption in Q2 of 2023 for Tanzania stood at 78PB in April, 81PB in May, and 83PB in June. This translated to a consumption of 2,366MB in April, 2,632MB in May, and 2,476MB in June per subscriber per month. In terms of broadband coverage, 3G covers 62% and 4G covers 50% of Tanzania’s land area.
Average download and upload speeds for mobile internet are 14.35 Mbps and 7.23 Mbps respectively and for fixed internet, the speeds are 26.09 Mbps and 22.76 Mbps respectively. The top 3 biggest data consumers in Tanzania as of June 2023 were YouTube (50,181 TB), Facebook (49,492 TB) and TikTok (43,573 TB).
Mobile Money
The Tanzania mobile money market is dominated by two providers, namely Vodacom’s M-Pesa and Tigo Pesa. As of June 2023, the total number of mobile money subscribers in Tanzania stood at 47,275,660.
M-Pesa is the leading mobile money provider in Tanzania, with a market share of 36%. Tigo Pesa is the second-largest mobile money provider in Tanzania, with a market share of 31%. Airtel Money is the third-largest mobile money provider in Tanzania, with a market share of 22%. It was launched in 2011 and is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel.
Halotel is the fourth-largest mobile money provider in Tanzania, with a market share of 8%.TTCL is the fifth-largest mobile money provider in Tanzania, with a market share of 3%. It is the incumbent operator in Tanzania and launched its mobile money service in 2018.
In Q2 2023, the total number of mobile money went from 44,940,441 in April to 47,275,660 in June with Vodacom’s M-Pesa holding the largest share of subscribers. The number of transactions has been increasing year on year with 3.4 billion transactions in 2020 to 4.2 billion transactions in 2022 with the average number of transactions per subscriber made in Q2 of 2023 being 9.
