Story by Owen Mandovha
THE local telecommunications industry continues to grow as more players were registered in 2022, while data usage during the same period increased by over six percent.
The 2022 POTRAZ annual report makes for some exciting reading in terms of the growth of the national telecommunications industry, which shows an average increase in active mobile subscriptions of 0.3% to 14,3 million subscribers, while the mobile penetration rate also rose by a similar margin.
Demand and usage of internet and data were also robust with an increase of data usage of 18.4% from 96 thousand terabytes to 113 terabytes.
This shows that the telecommunications industry continues to offer bountiful investment opportunities for local players, having witnessed the entrance of new players into the industry.
One of the mobile virtual network operators, Dolphin Telecoms has been granted an operating license, while a total of six internet providers were also licensed.
The licensed ISPs are Frampol, IT Anywhere, Timeless Tech and Kamba Telecoms, among others, while an application service provider called Click was also licensed.
In a major boost for the growth of the industry, there was an increase in capital expenditure to build telecommunications infrastructure in line with the growing demand for services which shows an inflation-adjusted capital expenditure growth of over 80 percent.
This development is a major boost for improved service delivery where subscribers have been faced with unending network glitches.
