Calls over the internet in Zimbabwe surge by 42%

Recently, POTRAZ released its Sector Performance Report for the first quarter of 2016. While looking into to the use of WhatsApp calling in comparison to Voice Calls I stumbled on some interesting statistics.

Internet Access Providers (IAPs)-  companies that provides individuals and other Internet Service Provider companies access to the Internet– have recorded an increase in voice traffic on both fixed and mobile network services.

For fixed network traffic, incoming voice traffic from IAPs increased by 36,1 % while Outgoing traffic to IAPs increased by 32,4%.

The increase in traffic to and from IAPs on fixed lines is attributed to the adoption of Voice Over IP (VoIP) call services in home and business environments.

On mobile networks traffic, incoming voice traffic increased by 42,2 % while outgoing to IAPs increased by 23,8%.

The internet voice traffic on mobile network services continues to increase as more people utilize and adopt services like WhatAspp call, Skype, Facebook call, Viber or IMO in their personal and business activities.

Whatsapp now constitutes a third of our mobile internet consumption, its is still unknown how much of that traffic is for WhatsApp calls, which are more bandwidth heavy than text.

These statistics are interesting as they show progress in the internet calling scene. More and more people are seeing the benefits of internet-based calling as a cost effective measure for their personal and business use.