Staff Writer
Total mobile operator costs shot 68.3 percent while total mobile operator revenues grew by 50.2% to record ZWL119.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, from ZWL79.5 billion recorded in the third quarter of 2022.
According to 4th Quarter Sector Performance Report released Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe, operating costs grew by 68.3% to record ZWL81.7 billion from ZWL48.6 billion.
The uptrend costs are a result of staff costs and bandwidth costs among other expenses.
“Mobile network operating costs continued on an uptrend, as staff costs, bandwidth costs and
depreciation continued to be the main cost drivers for mobile operators.
“The increased load shedding in the quarter under review also increased power costs. Operators relied on fuel for generators to power base stations, even for those supported by solar, as the length of load- shedding exceeded that which could be sufficiently sustained exclusively by solar power,” the report says.
A total of 175 base stations were deployed in the fourth quarter of 2022. LTE had the highest number of new deployments.
The decline in the total number of 2G base stations is attributable to the decommissioning of some 2G base stations, which were upgraded to 3G.
“The market share of mobile base stations across all technologies for the fourth quarter.
“Currently, Econet is the only mobile network operator with 5G infrastructure, hence the 100%
market share.
“Telecel is lagging behind in the deployment of Next Generation Networks, with only 1% market share of LTE deployments,” the report says.
The total number of active mobile telephone subscriptions was 14,300,790, as of 31 December 2022.
This represents a 1.8% decline from 14,562,242, recorded as of 30 September 2022.
Econet was the only operator to record growth in active subscriptions in the quarter under review.
Telecel and NetOne`s active subscriptions declined by 16.9% and 9.6% respectively, which outweighed subscriber growth recorded by Econet and resulted in total mobile subscriptions decline by a margin of 1.8%.
In the outlook POTRAZ says inflation will continue to put upward pressure on prices, thus negatively affecting consumer utility, in light of low disposable incomes.
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