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Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
THE country’s mobile operators registered a 14.2 percent decline in revenue to $188.5 million in the first quarter of this year.
This has been attributed to the continued fall in voice earnings following a slash in tariffs early this year and the growing use of internet-based platforms.
According to the latest industry report released by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz), mobile network operators realised a total of $188.5 million during the first quarter of this year compared to $219.7 million realised in the last quarter of last year.
In January, Potraz abandoned the COSITU pricing framework — an International Telecommunications Union’s model for the determination of costs and tariffs (including interconnection and accounting rates) for telephone services in favour of a long run incremental cost (LRIC) model that saw voice tariffs crumbling by close to 35 percent to 15 cents per minute.
“The decline in revenue can’t be wholly attributed to the tariff reduction, but also to the substitution effect whereby consumers are slowly shifting to internet and data based applications such as whatsapp which are becoming popular by the day.
“This is evidenced by the decline in voice traffic processed by the mobile operators and the increase in data traffic and revenue of 7.4 percent despite a marginal decline in the internet penetration rate of 0.7 percent during the first quarter of 2015 compared to the last quarter of 2014,” said the regulatory authority.
Potraz also indicated that fixed telephone voice revenue fell 19.5 percent to $35.7 million while revenues by Internet Access Providers increased by 7.4 percent to record $33,7 million from $31.4 million generated in the last quarter of 2014.
“The mobile telephone sector recorded a slight increase in subscriptions by 0.5 percent to reach 11.8 million from 11.7 million recorded in the previous quarter.”
Total money transferred using mobile services during the quarter was down 7.7 percent despite a 7.3 percent increase in mobile money subscribers.
“While mobile subscriptions registered a marginal increase, the total mobile revenues and mobile traffic registered a decline. Fixed network experienced a decline in the quarter under review as the fixed network continues to face competition from alternative technologies,” said Potraz.
derick.khumalo