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Econet Wireless strengthened its dominance in the telecommunications market after pushing its active mobile subscriber base to 12,374,206 in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the latest POTRAZ Sector Performance Report.
The figures reflect a 2.56% growth from the 12,064,749 subscribers Econet recorded in the third quarter of 2025, reinforcing the operator’s commanding position in a market experiencing steady growth in mobile connectivity.
The overall mobile sector grew by 2.11%, with national active mobile subscriptions rising from 16,432,685 in Q3 to 16,778,982 in Q4 2025. As a result, Zimbabwe’s mobile penetration rate increased from 104.83% to 107.04%, indicating strong adoption of mobile services across both urban and rural communities.
Econet’s performance alone accounted for the largest portion of this sectoral growth. The company widened its market share lead by 0.33 percentage points, while its rivals posted marginal gains and losses. NetOne, the second largest operator, recorded 4,101,492 subscribers, a modest 0.95% increase, while Telecel continued to contract, shedding 0.58% of its base to close the quarter at 303,284 subscribers.
POTRAZ attributed Econet’s expansion partly to its aggressive network investment drive. In the quarter under review, Econet deployed 78 new 2G, 78 new 3G, 78 new LTE, and 42 new 5G base stations leading all operators in infrastructure rollout. These deployments formed part of the national total of 366 5G, 3,585 LTE, 4,052 3G, and 5,101 2G base stations recorded by the regulator.
The growth in Econet’s subscriber base coincided with a sharp rise in overall mobile usage. The operator handled 4.48 billion minutes of voice traffic in Q4, representing an 11.09% increase from 4.03 billion minutes in the previous quarter. This enabled Econet to claim 88.32% of all mobile voice traffic in Zimbabwe.
Data consumption also surged across the sector, with Econet generating 130.18 billion MB of mobile data traffic up 9.79% from Q3. Although NetOne registered faster proportional data growth at 18.5%, Econet remained the dominant data carrier with more than 81% of national mobile data traffic.
The mobile revenue landscape also continued to reflect Econet’s overwhelming scale. Of the sector’s ZWG 7.74 billion generated in Q4, Econet contributed the largest share, buoyed by the continued uptake of data driven services such as WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and other video based platforms.
POTRAZ noted that Zimbabwe’s demand for data intensive applications has expanded significantly, driven by improvements in high speed network coverage. The quarter saw a 14.73% increase in 5G installations, further boosting the capacity for heavy data consumption.
With Econet leading the charge in both subscriber numbers and infrastructure development, the operator’s position as the country’s dominant mobile service provider appears increasingly entrenched heading into 2026.
POTRAZ forecasts continued growth in mobile subscriptions and data traffic as Zimbabwe transitions deeper into a digitalfirst economy supported by the rollout of 4G, 5G and fibre networks.
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