Zimbabwe’s biggest mobile network Econet has soared past 9 million subscribers while the country’s number two Telecel has lost market share.

This is according to a first quarter 2014 performance report from the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).

According to the report, Econet added 355,056 subscribers in the quarter to grow 4.1% from 8,720,869 connections to 9,075,925.

Telecel Zimbabwe, meanwhile, lost 119,190 subscribers as its base shrunk 4.6% from 2,578,559 to 2,459,369.

This is despite Telecel launching its Telecash mobile money service in this quarter.

“Telecel registered a significant decline of 4.6% in their subscriber base owing to the deactivation of subscriber lines which had become inactive on their network,” says POTRAZ.

This means that state-owned NetOne is also creeping up slowly to potentially overtake Telecel. NetOne grew its subscriber base by 1% from 2,333,739 to 2,356,815, according to POTRAZ.

“Econet recorded the largest subscriber market share of 65.3% gaining 1.3% market share from the previous quarter,” writes POTRAZ in its report.

“Telecel lost 1.2% market share down to 17.7% from 18.9% recorded in the previous quarter,” POTRAZ says.

Altogether, the results point to Zimbabwe having 13,892,109 subscribers in total, up 258,942 or 1.9% from 13,633,167 in the previous quarter.

In terms of Zimbabwe’s fixed line market, the number of lines grew from 304,162 to 326,183.