Rwanda’s mobile telephone penetration rate has inched up by 0.5 per cent to 76.1 per cent in February, from 75.6 per cent the previous month.

According to the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority’s (RURA) Active Mobile Subscriptions report for February 2018, the total number of active mobile telephone subscriptions rose by almost 58,090 users to 8.989 million at the end of February, up from 8.930 million at the end of January. This represented an increase of 0.65 per cent over the reporting period.

The regulator uses 90-day revenue generating subscriber returns from telecom firms to compute the figures.

MTN Rwanda was the biggest gainer as its subscriber base expanding by 2.08 per cent in February to 3,891,545, up from 3,812,168 the previous month.

The firm seems to be making quick inroads in the market before the Airtel and Tigo customers are fully integrated as its subscriber base grew by 2.25 per cent in January and its market share inched up to 43 per cent from 42.6 per cent in January. RURA is still recording active mobile telephone users based on three telecom firms – MTN, Airtel and Tigo – despite approving the Airtel-Tigo merger on January 23.

According to the report, Airtel customers were up slightly (by 0.28 per cent) to 1,680,233 from 1,675,497 the previous month, while Tigo’s were down for the second consecutive month, dropping by 0.76 per cent to 3,417,308 from 3,443,332 at the end of January. The RURA report shows that postpaid subscribers increased from 128,251 the previous month to 129,465 at the end of February, while prepaid users rose from 8,802,746 to 8,859,621 over the reporting period.