There are currently no towercos in Zimbabwe, with the three market MNOs Econet, Telecel and NetOne owning all telecom towers in the country between them, with the government having a stake in the latter two. An MVNO license was awarded to Dolphin Telecoms after previous attempts by the regulatory authority POTRAZ failed.
Econet holds the largest portion of Zimbabwe’s towers, and had at one point been exploring a carve out into a separate business unit Ecotowers, but this has been put on hold. Econet is currently upgrading 500 base stations and deploying equipment at 300 additional sites to expand coverage and enhance network performance, as well as rolling out a small number of 5G sites.
POTRAZ had struggled to encourage infrastructure sharing due to pushback from Econet, who saw it benefiting Telecel and NetOne far more then themselves. However, a deal was made to share around 270 towers through commercial swap arrangements. Telecel has been struggling to stay afloat amidst an ongoing economic crisis where annual inflation reached 132% and the Zimbabwean Dollar dropping 70% against the dollar.
Increased bandwidth costs and an inability to recuperate losses by increasing prices has left the MNO unable to pay suppliers or invest in network expansion, made worse by an increase in network vandalism and copper theft.
Reports indicate that Telecel will have to go into liquidation unless the government takes immediate action. At the end of last year Telecel’s liabilities outweighed its assets by 16:1. Grid availability in Zimbabwe is high at around 95%. Econet reports just 46 of its towers are off grid and has plans to invest in 500 solar-powered base stations over the next 2 years in order to achieve its carbon-neutral foal by 2030.
Econet’s in-house ESCO, Distributed Power Africa manages power across all 2,000 Econet sites in Zimbabwe, and is exploring how to solarize sites to reduce grid consumption. Powertel is planning to invest over US$50mn to improve connectivity in rural areas of the country including improvements to ZESA’s electricity supply network and expansion of the energy grid.
