adminstatistics for the period under review show that Telecel lost some 375 000 subscribers from its 1,8 million subscriber base as at the close of last year.
Telecel’s network coverage currently stands at 58 percent and Orascom Telecom — which partly owns the local unit — recently indicated that it plans to expand its network to cover at least 85 percent.
Prior to the decline Telecel had added on the largest number of subscribers (575 000) since September 2011.
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The company is down to 1,5 million subscribers, effectively putting them in third place in terms of the country’s mobile telecommunications service providers, displacing NetOne, which is now in second position. Econet continues to rule the roost with 6,4 million subscribers.
The State-owned operator, NetOne, currently has 1,6 million subscribers having added 144 000 subscribers to the 1,4 million they had as at December 2011.
On the other hand, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe continued with the incremental trend in respect of its subscriber base, adding on 714 000 subscribers during the period under review.
Econet currently has 6,4 million active subscribers.
The country’s largest mobile telecoms provider’s growth may have contributed to the rise in Zimbabwe’s teledensity rate, which now stands at 78,8 percent.
National teledensity rose by 4,1 percent from the 74,7 percent that was recorded at the beginning of the year.
The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology is currently propagating a five-year strategic plan to 2014, in which it targets to increase national teledensity by 10 percent each year.
A country’s teledensity measures the number of active mobile phone SIM cards and landlines as a percentage of the country’s total population.
A high teledensity rate typically results in declining tariffs as competition between operators increases. Zimbabwe’s mobile telephony tariffs are already fairly competitive compared to those of other operators in the region.
A growing teledensity rate combined with rising Internet connectivity can also result in greater information and communication technology start-up activity.
Meanwhile, the country’s fixed telecommunications operator TelOne has bucked a protracted “stagnancy-decline” trend in respect of its subscriber base by increasing it by 35 119 subscribers during the period.
Prior to this TelOne had 337 881 subscribers, figures which showed that it had lost around 50 000 subscribers since 2009.
Observers attribute the fixed telecommunications provider’s recorded growth to the low-cost ADSL broadband that it is offering.
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is a high-speed Internet access service that utilises the existing copper telephone links to send and receive data at speeds that exceed conventional dial-up modems.
Access to the ADSL service typically requires an active landline subscription.
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