The Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) has declared MTN South Africa's subsidiary, MTN Zambia as the country's largest mobile phone operator by subscription, taking over from Airtel.

MTN has over the past few years steadily been investing in network improvement and expansion and so far has the best network in the country, according to ZICTA.

As of December 2014, ZICTA said MTN Zambia had more customers than any other mobile phone operator in Zambia. Zambia has three mobile phone operators MTN, Airtel and Zamtel.

Out of the 10.1 million total mobile phone subscribers in the country, ZICTA manager for interconnection and competition Collins Chomba said MTN had 48%, Airtel 37% and Zamtel 15%.

Effectively, this makes MTN Zambia, the largest mobile operator by subscription in the country. The revelation has put to an end the debate over which mobile phone operator was the largest in the country.

Over the past two years, Airtel has been running adverts claiming that it was the country's largest mobile service provider.

In the last two years, subscribers have been protesting Airtel's poor network quality forcing ZICTA to warn the operator of severe sanctions if it continued providing poor services to subscribers.

Meanwhile, ZICTA has said it will this year introduce new measures that will make mobile phone service providers more accountable.

Among the measures, ZICTA said it will publish the names of mobile service providers that have performed badly every quarter.

ZICTA said this would enable customers to make better decisions on which network to use.