By 30th September 2007, about 7.7 millions Tanzanians (at most) owned telephone lines. This is an increase of about 12% from June 2007. The mobile telecommunication leads the market by having more subscriptions (98%) as compared to fixed line services (2%). For more details see Table 1 below.

While the population of Tanzania is growing at the rate of 2.7% annually, the annual number of Tanzanian subscribing for a Telephone lines grows at an average rate of 47%.

Though, the subscription is growing at higher rate than that of population, yet there is still a huge gap as shown in figure1 above. The figure shows clearly that the larger population of Tanzanian individuals (at least 80.6%) do not have telephone lines. Table 2 below gives a detailed summary of population and subscriptions.

Graphical presentation of the underserved population of 32 millions people (80.6%) against telephones lines 7.7 millions (19.4%) is as depicted below

The trend of subscriptions among the operators over the period does not demonstrate high competition. Vodacom is leading the market in terms of number of subscribers with 48% of all subscribers (50% last June). Celtel ranks the second with 29% (28% last June) followed by Tigo (13%, 12% last June), Zantel (7%, the same as in June) and TTCL (3%, 2% last June).

Figure 4 below shows the subscribers growth pattern over the period of six years. The growth tends to converge to around 50% by September 2007.

As it is shown in the figure, up to September 2007 subscription growth for all Operators is dropping except for TTCL which is shown to be increasing. Table 4 below gives a detailed summary of Growth Pattern per each Operator.