Zimbabwe’s NetOne, a state owned mobile network operator with about 2.4 million subscribers, is to expand its network capacity to enable it to carry 8 million users, its managing director, Reward Kangai, has told ITWeb Africa in an interview.

NetOne is Zimbabwe’s third largest telecom company after market leader Econet Wireless and Telecel Zimbabwe.

NetOne; though, has lagged behind Econet and Telecel in terms of subscriber base growth.

But Kangai said the company could by now have 3 million users on its network, putting it ahead of Telecel Zimbabwe, which has just above 2.5 million subscribers.

“We lost a number of customers last year because of the need to register. We could already have reached 3 million by now,” said Kangai.

Following the dropping of a court case in which Tafadzwa Muguti, a Zimbabwean businessman now based in South Africa, was contesting a tender award to Huawei, NetOne is now set to get a $218 million loan from China.

The money will also be used to aggressively expand its network capacity.

The network expansion will also boost the telco’s data capacity as well, according to the company.

“The project we are undertaking will bring capacity on the network to 8 million. We will also seek to roll out aggressively high speed internet services and high speed data access.”