By Alois Vinga

TOTAL fixed voice traffic registered a 28 % decline as corporate companies adopted data-based communications that have seen most work being done from home; the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has reported.

According to POTRAZ’s second quarter of 2020 report, the huge decline was also prompted by the Covid-19 containment measures which saw firms ordering some of their employees to work from home.

“Total fixed voice traffic declined by 27.8% to record 80.9 million minutes in the second quarter of 2020 from 112.1 million minutes,” the report said.

The report also notes the total mobile voice traffic declined by 1.2% to record 1.31 billion minutes from 1.33billion minutes during the period under review.

The volume of fixed outgoing calls to mobiles declined by minus 22.2% while incoming calls from mobiles registered minus 24.1 %.

International incoming calls declined by minus 19 % while international outgoing calls declined by 36.3 %.

Total postal and courier volume also declined by 79.7% to record 272 881 items from 1 342 957.

However, on the other hand, mobile internet and data traffic increased by 56.2% to record 10 407TB from 6 661TB.

Active internet and data subscriptions also declined by 4% to record 8 267 268 from 8 614 009.

As a result, the internet penetration rate declined by 2.4% to reach 56.7% from 59.1%.

Used international internet bandwidth capacity also increased by 2.8% to record 128 173Mbps from 124 627 Mbps.

“Revenue generated by the mobile telephone networks grew by 45.8% to record $3 billion from $2.1 billion. At the same time, total mobile network operating costs grew by 217.7% to record $ 16.1 billion from $5.1 billion,” POTRAZ said in the report.

During the period under review, total postal and courier revenue declined by 2.1% to record $69.4 million from $70.9 million.