Zimbabwean telecommunications companies need to "adapt" their business models, share infrastructure and migrate more to data enabled services or risk marked decline in revenues, Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa said Thursday.

He said rapid technological developments in the industry were necessitating the shift in strategy and also highlighted that infrastructure sharing would be implemented.

"Both mobile and fixed operators (need) to adapt their business models to embrace migration from voice to data internet services," he said, presenting Zimbabwe's mid-term fiscal policy statement in parliament.

The minister said the government was to implement "infrastructure sharing on a cost recovery basis across all utility sectors".

This would be underpinned by a "dig once policy" seeking to ensure that telecom operators do not duplicate infrastructure such as fibre optic.

In pursuit of this, state owned fixed phone operator, TelOne, as well as Powertel, an internet services company owned by state power utility, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) and private internet company, Africom, will benefit from "consolidation of the infrastructure investments, including the fibre optic backbone" in Zimbabwe.

"Expenditure towards ICT projects during the first half of the year amounted to $30.7 million," Chinamasa said. These projects include e-government projects, NetOne's network expansion and a TelOne fibre optic project among others.

TelOne has already commissioned the Harare-Kariba and Plumtree 10Gbps transmission link.

It also recently launched metro Wi-Fi hot spots across the capital, Harare under a fibre internet to the home project, with excess capacity to connect more than 15 000 more homes in Harare and some of the major mining towns in the country.