‘Econet maintains market leadership’

BUSINESS REPORTER

A second quarter telecom industry report shows that Econet Wireless gained market share in the critical voice, mobile data and SMS segments of the mobile telecommunications market in Zimbabwe.

But the report also revealed that the industry continues to battle rising costs, with a 44% surge in costs recorded quarter-on-quarter at the end of June 2022.

According to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ)

Postal & Telecommunications Sector Performance Report Second Quarter 2022, Econet continued to lead the market share for internet and data traffic, gaining 2.4% to close the period at 81.5%, while Telecel and NetOne lost market shares by 0.7% and 1.7% respectively.

“Econet’s continued share growth can be attributable to their huge numbers of active mobile subscribers and their wide network coverage across the country,” said POTRAZ in the report.

In the period under review, a total of 25,756 terabytes of mobile Internet and data were consumed, representing a 16.8% increase in internet and data traffic from 22,052 terabytes consumed in the first quarter of the year.

According to the report, Econet and NetOne recorded growth in internet and data traffic by margins of 20.5% and 6.5% respectively as Telecel recorded a huge downturn by a margin of 53.9%.

At the same time, Econet gained voice traffic market share by a margin of 1.1% to 75%, whereas Telecel and NetOne lost market share by 0.3% and 0.8% respectively.

During the second quarter of 2022 mobile voice traffic totalled 2.35 billion minutes up 32.6% from 1.77 billion minutes recorded in the first quarter of the year.

“The increase in overall mobile voice traffic is attributable to stable tariffs which were obtaining in the quarter under review; no base tariff review was effected throughout the second quarter of 2022. Net on net traffic appeared to be the major driver of the quarterly growth, recording a 31.9% categorical growth,” the regulator said.

“Likewise, mobile to mobile traffic had a significant impact on total traffic as it recorded a 46.4% growth.”

In the second quarter to June 2022, all SMS categories, except for international incoming traffic, recorded significant positive growth. This resulted in a 3.1% increase in total SMS traffic from 2.433 billion in the first quarter to 2.5 billion in the second quarter.

“Econet and Telecel gained market share for SMS traffic by 0.7% and 1.9% respectively, whereas NetOne lost market share by a margin of 2.6%,” POTRAZ said.

Econet also maintained its 100% market share of 5G base stations in the country, adding its tally to 22 in the three months to June, up from 10 in the previous quarter.

The company enjoyed 53.2%, 54.6% and 58.9% market share of 2G, 3G and LTE base stations in the period under review.

The regulator noted that the total number of active mobile telephone subscriptions as of 30 June 2022 was 14,006,034, showing a 2% decline from the 14,289,085 recorded in the first quarter of the year.

Zimbabwe’s three mobile operators recorded a decline in active subscriptions in the quarter under review, with Econet closing the period under review at 9,125,792 down from 9,359,485 in the previous period while NetOne had 4,411,239 from 4,422,595 and Telecel was down to 469,003 from 507,005.

In the period under review, mobile network operating costs grew quarter-on-quarter by 44.9%, to ZWL$24.6bn, from ZWL$17bn recorded in the first quarter of 2022.

The growth in operating costs surpassed the growth in aggregate revenue, which went up by 35.1% to ZWL$38,921,037,353 in the second quarter.