This comes hardly as a surprise to many because since Q1 2020 mobile data consumption was on the up from the previous year. The acceleration in 2020 was, of course, due to the pandemic pushing people online. But the rate of growth has nevertheless been something to behold. POTRAZ recorded 6 661 TB in Q1 2020, 10 407 TB in Q2, 14 878 TB in Q3 and now mobile data consumption breached 16 000 TB in Q4 2020, 16 383 TB to be exact.
The jump marks a 13.1% increase from the 14 878 TB that was registered in Q3 2020 and represents and an overall 62.1% increase from Q1 2020.
Unsurprisingly in-bundle mobile data usage dominated with 97.1% of all data consumed in Zimbabwe.
Mobile data traffic market share in Q4 2020
So how did the three MNOs Econet, NetOne and Telecel fare in Q4 2020?
Econet ate up a lot more of the mobile data market share in Q4 2020. The countries largest mobile network operator was able to eat up a comined 8.7% from Telecel and NetOne.
For Telecel this is particularly concerning because it now only has 0.6% of the mobile data market share. The MNO has had a rough go of it since 2015 and now marks one of the lowest points for the company, made worse by the fact that data consumption is climbing.
On NetOne’s side of things, the MNO seems to have been unable to convert the massive onboarding of customers it did in Q3 2020 (around 100K new subscribers) to its primary offerings. I am sure there are some serious talks happening over at NetOne, well besides their ongoing wrangle with former CEO Lazarus Muchenje.
