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.
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