Subscribers may be up but NetOne is taking a beating in mobile data & voice traffic

Valentine Muhamba

NetOne, OneTV, OneMoney COVID-19 Funds, 5gb bundle, data bundle prices

NetOne saw a decent increase in the number of subscribers in Q3 2020 according to POTRAZ. However, NetOne doesn’t seem to have grown in key areas like mobile data and voice traffic market share.

Mobile Internet and Data traffic overall grew by 43% to record 14 878 TB in Q3 from the 10 704 registered in Q2 2020. All MNOs recorded growth in internet and data usage mainly because of the increasing data demands brought on by the pandemic.

With NetOne registering the largest increase in subscribers in Q3 one would think this would reflect in them increasing their market share in mobile internet and data traffic.

As you can see Netone’s market share shrunk by 9% which Telecel (0.1%) and Econet (8.9%) ate up. The story is the same for voice traffic:

NetOne were the biggest losers here too with 0.5% from Q2 followed by Econet with 0.3%. Telecel was the only MNO that increased it’s market share eating up the 0.8% dropped by its competitors.

This is very bad…

NetOne is effectively bleeding in the areas that matter most, voice and data are an MNO’s bread and butter. They can welcome as many new subscribers as they like but if those individuals aren’t helping to grow the company’s primary offerings then it doesn’t really achieve anything. I thought that NetOne would see a further increase from the 9.6% and 0.1% gains in data and voice traffic market share it saw in Q2 respectively.

The cause for the decline in voice traffic market share is unclear, there isn’t that much difference in prices across three MNOs. But data might have something to do with DroidVPN users the MNO has been trying to stamp out. If they are the cause of the data market share decline then NetOne has to step up its efforts in that respect.

5 comments

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  1. Charig83

    Econet and telecel benefit more from their affordable wi fi data bundles. The minimum that netone is offering is way out of reach of many, hence people shy away from it. Netone should offer 5gb,10gb, 15gb one fi bundles, and they will hit the jackpot

    Reply
    1. Brian Matsaira

      I agree with you. I used to use netone data then netone became too greedy when it comes to data. It moved from 950bond for 25gig to 2500 something unheard of in the history of increasing things.
      This was a bad idea and whoever did it must be fired that person has no business brains.
      I then switched back to econet that I had abandoned for two years.
      When I switched back I stopped buying everything about netone. All people did the same. Netone is now run by non thinkers who are too proud to accept failure. It got stuck on 2500 for wifi data when it clearly see no one is buying. It’s now more than 6 months but it can’t do something about it. This shows worst leadership is at the helm of things.
      Netone must understand something we came to it because econet was expensive not because we had anything to do with it, as it became expensive we went back to econet.

      Reply
    2. Tamuka

      True that’s basically the whole issue.

      Reply
    3. Shepherd Fusire

      This the fact. Entry monthly data for netone is way out of reach @2500, so people opt for econet and telecel.

      Reply
  2. The Empress

    Econet invested in infrastructure during the good years putting up cell towers left and right and upgraded the ones that were already up from 2G to 3G and they were moving on to 4G then the Zimbabwean economy had a stroke and put a halt to that plan so they switched to buying batteries, generators and solar panels for all their cell towers.
    What was NetOne doing? who knows 🤷🏾‍♂️. But whatever they were doing they seem to have been doing it half heartedly.
    Then came the pandemic and the lockdowns. And most of the the Internet using population was stuck at home bored out of their skulls with nothing to do,
    The question became rather simple. Do you use NetOne that provides cheap voice calls and cheap data at unstable speeds and always disappears as soon as there is a a powercut in your neighbourhood or Econet that provides slightly expensive voice calls and slightly expensive data at constant speeds and rarely goes down when zesa goes bye bye.
    Well the results are in. Econet wins by a large margin. For me this is not too much of a surprise because unless other factors intervene CHEAP will always (always) lose to RELIABLE.
    Netone used to boast about having the widest coverage. But right now Econet has the best.

    Reply

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