The recent fourth quarter sector performance report released by POTRAZ clearly spells a tough 2017 for Zimbabwe’s telecom operators as voice call traffic and mobile money transactions continue to fall. SMS and voice calls have been the major source of revenue for our mobile network operators but a reduction in their traffic highlights a shift of fortunes in the telecommunications sector.
POTRAZ as the country’s regulator mandated to oversee the postal and telecommunications industry has relayed to us a very detailed report of how the sector performed in the later part of 2016.
The report indicates that Internet Penetration Rate declined by 0.1% to settle at 50% from the previous 50.1%. This is a serious area of concern for the regulator and its parent ministry considering that an estimated 7 million people are active on the Internet from a total population of 14 million. It is very worrying for a country like Zimbabwe which commands the highest literacy rate in Africa to be found at the trail of how information is accessed in this digital generation.
Another worrying part of the report was the significant fall in mobile money transactions by a negative 35% to put the future of Ecocash, OneWallet and Telecash in jeopardy. Furthermore, cross networking transactions went down by a 44% margin, derailing Zimbabwe’s transition into a cashless economy. The fall of mobile money transactions can be credited to the serious cash shortages prevailing in the country where the general public now desist from cashing in the little tangible cash they have.
The fall of cross networking transactions also cast a dark shadows into the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s plans to promote e-commerce where people have to switch cash transactions to plastic money. Mobile money has been the major source of foreign currency for the central bank through incoming remittances from the diaspora. However, a fall in transactions does not aid the RBZ’s ambitions to resort to e-commerce as a means of sustaining the country’s fiscals.
The only positive index from the report was a 2.8% increase in the total telecom revenue to record $269,553,225 from the $262,021,721 recorded in the previous quarter. The increase in telecom revenue can be attributed to huge data sales made by Econet and NetOne in the last quarter of 2016. Also Internet Access Providers such as Liquid Telecom through its retail arm ZOL contributed to this positive margin after reaching their 48000 connected households milestone in 2016.
POTRAZ reported that postal and courier volumes increased by 5.4% to register a noticeable 10% increase from the previous quarter. However there was not much movement in subscriptions for mobile and Internet services except
for fixed telephone lines which declined by 8.7%. The mobile penetration rate (active) increased by 0.5% to reach 94.8% from 94.3% recorded in the previous quarter.
