Zimbabwe: Abnormal phone usage stunts cellular network growth

The subscriber base experienced growth of 39% in 2007, the company said, indicating that sub-economic tariffs had resulted in the network being congested, leaving no capacity for subscriber additions during the 2008 reporting period.

“The subscriber base grew by only 3% to 653,936 at the end of the year. The marginal increase in the subscriber base was a result of limited radio network capacity due to sub-economic tariffs which prevailed during the year,” said CEO Douglas Mboweni.

He said the sub-economic tariffs has resulted in abnormal usage levels of about four times the carrying capacity of the cellular network.

“In addition, the erratic and intermittent power supply exacerbated the problem of congestion, resulting in constrained subscriber growth,” Mboweni said

He said a major network expansion project was now underway, with the potential to raise the subscriber base to 1,2 million subscribers.

As part of this project, Swedish firm Ericsson is providing equipment to expand the core network, which is made up of the switching systems, Intelligent Network platforms, prepaid systems, as well as new base stations. Chinese firm, ZTE is supplying radio base stations. The Chinese company is also building new sites in remote rural areas as well as along the country's highways.

Unviable tariffs have made it cheaper for Zimbabweans to talk for hours on the phone, congesting networks and making it very difficult for others to make calls.

There are three cellular network operators in the country, namely Econet Wireless, Telecel Zimbabwe and Net*One.