Zain Tanzania Aims for 3.8 Million Subscribers by Year-End

Zain Tanzania says that it expects to achive a subscriber base of 3.8 million by the end of this year. Zain Tanzania Managing Director, Mr Khaled Muhtadi recently said that the company was close to reaching 3.3 million subscribers.

The company has earmarked an expenditure of US$180 million on expanding its network next year - having spent US$440 million over the past four years.

"Our aim is to become the country's market leader in terms of revenue and customer base at the end of next year (2009)," Mr Muhtadi said, "Our investment has had tremendous impact on TanzaniaĆ's infrastructure, its economy and its quality of life," he said and added that Zain will soon be launching the 3G network in Tanzania to offer Zain customers the fastest internet connectivity in the country.

Zain Group re-branded all its 14-country Celtel operations across Africa to Zain on 1st August.

Based on figures for the end of July from the Mobile World subscriber tracker, Vodafone had 4.5 million subscribers, compared to Zain's 2.8 million, Mobitel's 1.7 million and Zanzibar Telecom's 1.07 million customers. All the networks are GSM based, although a CDMA operator, Benson Informatics has just started up service.

According to a recent governement survey, 65 percent of the mobile phone subscribers live in Dar es Salaam.

The Tanzania Communications Authority said while the population is growing at nearly three percent annually, the annual number of Tanzanians subscribing for a telephone line is rising by 47 per cent.

"Though the subscription is growing at a higher rate than that of population, there is still a huge gap. Figures show clearly that the larger population of Tanzanians (at least 80.6 percent) do not have telephone lines," the regulator noted in a market report.

Posted to the site on 8th October 2008