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Business Editor
STATE-owned mobile operator, NetOne Cellular (Pvt) Limited’s revenue grew 13 percent to $57 million in the first half of 2015 spurred by an increase in subscriber base and “massive” uptake of its data services, the company said.

NetOne has invested over $214 million in network expansion and is currently undergoing the largest network upgrade undertaken in its history financed through a $218 million loan from the Chinese government.

The on-going upgrade and the national mobile broadband project, would give the second largest mobile operator the capacity to grow its subscriber base to eight million from 3.6 million as at June 2015, with an ability to quickly ramp up its operations.

“Revenue for the half year to June 30, 2015 at $57.8 million was 13.8 percent above revenue for the same period in 2014. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation for 2015 was $10.39 million compared to $9.6 million the same period last year,” the board said in a statement accompanying the company’s financial results for the period issued yesterday.

During the period the company’s subscriber base grew 28 percent to 3.5 percent from 2.7 million while network investment clocked $5.5 million from $3.3 million, growing by an average 66 percent.

However, the firm reported a net loss of $5.8 million weighed down by a substantial investment in additional spectrum required to make the commitment in Zim-Asset to provide ubiquitous internet connectivity a reality.

The firm already boasts of the widest 4G/LTE network countrywide, according to the statement. It said the use of recently acquired data casting licence, allowing operation in the 700MHz range, will allow NetOne to rapidly deploy 4G/LTE services to a much broader audience than has been possible in the past.

The investment is envisaged to help the government in rolling out e-government initiatives in e-health, e-learning and e-agriculture to remote communities in the country.

“Innovations in the areas of mobile financial services and media services are expected to drive utilisation of our data services, while our traditional voice and SMS are expected to continue the business into the future,” said NetOne.