Zimbabwe’s voice traffic reached 1.27 billion minutes in the third quarter of 2018, representing a 5% increase from 1.2 billion minutes recorded in the second quarter of 2018, according to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).
The surge in voice traffic comes on the back of a 4% increase in mobile penetration rate from 88% in the second quarter of 2018 to 92 % realized in the quarter under review.
According to POTRAZ, one of the major contributors to the increase in mobile voice traffic was the 5% increase in active mobile subscriptions from 12,2 million recorded in the second quarter of 2018 to 12,7 million realized in the quarter under review.
Zimbabwe’s mobile voice traffic has been falling in the previous three years due to the emergency of Over-the-Top Services such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Skype.
Many mobile phone subscribers have turned to the use of Internet based applications to avoid the high costs of buying airtime for voice calls.