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What subscriber loss? Our subscribers have grown by 300,000 says Telecel MD
L.S.M Kabweza, Technology Zimbabwe
June 01, 2012

View this article on the Technology Zimbabwe website

We just received a news release from Telecel on the subscriber stats matter from yesterday's article. Well, Monday's actually. The mobile operator is clearly bent on setting the record straight. The release is basically an expanded version of the statement from them we posted yesterday - that the latest stats supplied us (and the Herald) by POTRAZ are incorrect. And that even the December 2011 stats released by POTRAZ were incorrect.

POTRAZ in the meanwhile has not responded to the email we sent them seeking clarification on the matter. The state owned local newspapers will likely also check with POTRAZ when they receive this Telecel news release and usually, you can bet on them getting a response. So us mere mortals will wait for now.

Strangely, Telecel is only complaining now when their subscribers have been understated. When the opposite happened for the December stats, when the number of their subscribers was overstated (at least according to them), they didn't say anything. It's almost as if the overstatement in December was a convenient error that everyone agreed didn't matter.

Here's the full text of the Telecel news release:

Telecel Zimbabwe says it has seen its active subscriber base grow considerably over the past few months, contrary to recent media reports.

The company's managing director, Mr John Swaim, said growth in the number of subscribers had grown steadily. He said the network expects to hit the 2 000 000 active subscriber mark soon.

Clearing up some of the confusion which has been apparent in the market, he said the numbers provided by Telecel are based solely on its active subscriber count.

"An active subscriber refers to a customer who has made a revenue-generating activity within the last 90 days. This is the officially accepted GSM definition.

"There is also a reported capacity called Home Location Register (HLR), which refers to the total installed capacity including those subscribers who have not been active over 90 days as well as those whose lines are inactive pending registration and the subsequent initial activation," Mr Swaim said.

The number of Telecel active subscribers had increased, he said, from 1 500 000 at the end of December 2011 to 1 800 000 at the end of March, an increase of 300 000 subscribers.

The organisation expected to celebrate the attainment of 2 000 000 active subscribers sometime in early July this year.

Mr Swaim said statistics reported recently in the Press were incorrect. At the end of the first quarter of this year, Telecel had 1 800 000 active subscribers as opposed to the incorrect 1 500 000 reported.

The incorrect figures had reflected a loss of more than 300 000 subscribers in the first three months of the year, when in fact the reverse was the case. There had been a gain, not a loss, of more than 300 000 subscribers.

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