Online Writer
Zimbabwe’s continued debate over mobile data prices highlights a difficult economic dilemma: consumers need more affordable data connectivity, but the network operators require billions of dollars in sustained investment to deliver the connectivity.
For millions of Zimbabweans, the cost of staying connected is a legitimate concern for both young people and elderly pensioners.
Low-income workers and households grappling with rising food, transport, electricity and healthcare costs understandably want affordable data, especially in an increasingly digital world, where connectivity has become an essential necessity, not a luxury.
But affordability is just half the story.
Focusing only on end user prices ignores the other side of the story, which is: what are service providers’ capital and operating costs of sustainably delivering the connectivity infrastructure to consumers of data?
The latest figures from the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) offer interesting and insightful perspective into the debate.
According to its sector performance report for the first quarter of 2026, mobile network operators invested ZWG2.73 billion in capital expenditure, a 152 percent increase from ZWG1.08 billion in the preceding quarter.
Remarkably, this increase in investment came as aggregate industry revenue fell 2.36 percent to ZWG7.55 billion, while average revenue per user declined 5.2 percent to ZWG437.02.
These figures challenge the assumption that higher data prices automatically translate into stronger operator revenues. Rather, at a time operators are committing more resources to infrastructure, average customer spending is coming under pressure.
Yet investment is visible on the ground.
During the quarter in question, operators added 161 LTE, 85 3G, 68 2G and 13 new 5G base stations.
This investment is urgent and necessary, as demand accelerates due to both an increase population and rising demand for digital services. Mobile internet traffic increased 11.85 percent in just three months, from 160.33 petabytes to 179.33 petabytes. Compared with the first quarter of 2025, traffic had surged by 57.28 percent.
It reflects a fundamental shift in how Zimbabweans work, learn, transact and communicate and underlines the critical importance of continued investment in digital infrastructure. Mobile banking, digital payments, e-commerce, online education and business services, including mining and medical services, increasingly depend on reliable and quality digital connectivity.
But every additional gigabyte consumed has to travel through infrastructure that costs money to build, operate, maintain and frequently upgrade.
Telecommunications is among the most capital-intensive sectors of any economy.
An industry capital investment benchmark – called the capital intensity ratio – suggests operators need to invest at least 15 to 20 percent of the revenues into network infrastructure to maintain reasonable service quality, modernise equipment, upgrade and expand capacity and accommodate growing demand.
This goes beyond building new base stations. It includes replacing ageing equipment, upgrading transmission systems, expanding fibre infrastructure, strengthening power resilience and deploying newer technologies such as LTE and 5G.
Without sustained reinvestment, network technologies fall behind and become obsolete. They also fail to meet demand, deliver faster speeds or work on the latest handsets and devices, resulting in congestion, slower speeds and a deterioration in customer experience.
POTRAZ put aggregate mobile network operating costs at ZWG4.59 billion in the first quarter.
The industry’s cost-to-income ratio stood at 60.79 percent, showing that a significant proportion of revenue is absorbed by operating expenses.
This is why the important conversation around data pricing in the digital age, requires a sober, numbers-driven debate and analysis, that respects the critical need to offer affordable and quality service to consumers, while recognizing and accounting for the real costs involved in delivering that service.
