Vodacom Tanzania, part of South Africa's Vodacom Group, increased its users to 10 million this month from nine million in March this year, it said on September 19. Ranked the largest mobile phone operator in east Africa's second biggest economy, Vodacom said its M-Pesa money transfer service had more than two million customers, double the number in 2009.
M-Pesa has been highly successful in neighbouring Kenya where the biggest operator, Safaricom, has over nine million active users on the same service. Tanzania's mobile phone subscribers rose 20 percent to 21 million last year as a vicious price war pushed tariffs down.
Mobile phone penetration in Tanzania stood at 47 percent last year, the communications regulator said.