Reopening of schools following the long December holiday dented telcos' revenue from text messages in the quarter to March, official data by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows.
The newly published statistics show a fall in mobile short message service by 4.3 percent in the quarter to March, a period when students had come from the long holidays.
"There was a general decline in on-net and off-net mobile SMS dropping by 4.7 percent and 5.3 percent to record 11.8 billion and 1.6 billion messages, respectively," said CA in the latest sectoral statistical releases.
"This drop is attributed to the end of the long school holiday coupled with the conclusion of the festive season."
The authority reports that text messages sent per month per subscription dropped to 65.8 during the period under review from 70.4 messages reported in the preceding quarter owing to the general decline in SMS during the period.
On-net is used when your call or message originates on your home operator's network and terminates to another mobile number that resides with your operator and off-net is the opposite. When messaging drops, voice calls increase as an alternative channel of communication.
Promotions and offers saw growth of voice traffic from 23.6 billion in the last quarter ending December to 25.2 billion in the period under review.
