POTRAZ Report For 2017 Is Out. Here Are Some Quick Numbers For You

Farai Mudzingwa Avatar
Base stations in Zimbabwe

POTRAZ has just released their Sector Performance report. The report contains details of perfomance for the 4th quarter of 2017 along with the 2017 annual report from Potraz.

Notable points from the Report:

ACCESS

• Active Mobile Subscriptions rose from 12. 878 926 in 2016 to 14 092 104 in 2017 a 9.4% growth.
• Mobile Penetration rate rose from 94.8% 102.7%  a 7.9% growth.
• Active internet subs rose from 6.721, 947 to 6.971.617 ,a 3.7 %growth.
• Internet Penetration rate rose from 50% in 2016 to 50.8% in 2017 a .8% growth.
• Voice traffic decreased by 5.7% from 2016 to 2017.
• Mobile internet data grew from 8,094TB to 15 360 TB 89.8%
• SMS Volume grew by 3.5% from 8.1 billion texts in 2016 to 8.4 billion(notifications from financial services drove this growth)

Duty on smartphones stifles penetration of smartphones. If the duty is lowered internet penetration rate will also improve. Potraz indicated they were working on reviewing this in order to encourage adoption. He also said there are other parties involved in these discussions.

Mobile Network Revenues

For the first time in 4 years revenues increased from $722 934 718 to $849 880 489. The growth is attributed to data usage and mobile money. This is a 17.6% growth

Investment

Fixed investment grew from 5,926 278 to 57 784 667 a growth of 875.1%. Mobile investment dropped from 187.6 million to 100.8 million a decline of 46.39%. Total telecommunications investment dropped from $257 million to $198 million a 22.9% decline.

Outlook for 2018

Potraz expects industry growth will continue to be driven by data and internet use. IoT innovations will help boost internet usage. Potraz also expects e-government, telemedicine and e-learning to help boost uptake and usage of data. Potraz believes availability, affordability and scalability need to be supported coupled with developing relevant content and apps to catalyse. E-commerce needs to be supported, as it is a key driver of international courier volumes and revenues. Potraz is also looking to work hand in hand with Zimpost to address e-commerce solutions and remain relevant.

What about 5G?

The only update given in terms of 5G adoption as it will increase revenues and penetration rates. They are looking into areas of how to adopt 5G as early as possible and were in Barcelona attending the Mobile World Congress

We will also be analysing the reports and come back with more content

Download the 2017 Q4 Report

Download the 2017 Annual Report

5 comments

  1. Subfrancis

    I can’t find the report online. Where can I get it?

  2. Subfrancis

    Where is the report

  3. Jay

    Great! But where can we get the report you are summarising

  4. Jack Russell
  5. GuyGoma

    Is POTRAZ saying that only 50.8 % of subscribers have Whatsapp. As long as someone has access to Whatsapp,they automatically qualify for internet. And do they consider lines that have been inactive for more than ,say 2 months, 14 million is too high a figure.

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