POTRAZ data reveals a near 10% decline in fixed-line calls, marking a steep and seemingly irreversible trend towards modern communication tools HARARE – The iconic ring of the landline telephone is fading into silence across Zimbabwe. The latest sector performance report fromPOTRAZreveals a dramatic 9.67% decline in fixed-line voice traffic, plummeting from 54.64 million minutes to just 49.36 million minutes in the second quarter of 2025. The figures starkly illustrate the relentless decline of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) in the face of competition from mobile phones and free-to-use internet applications.
Even mobile voice traffic saw only a negligible growth of 0.40%, suggesting that traditional calling itself is being supplanted by cheaper, feature-rich alternatives. The report directly attributes this collapse to the “continued substitution effect of Over-The-Top (OTT) communication applications,” such as WhatsApp, Zoom, and Skype, which use internet data to offer free or low-cost calls and messages. For Harare resident Maria Chiweshe, 32, the data confirms a personal reality.
“We haven’t had a landline at home for five years,” she said. “Why would we? My entire family is on WhatsApp.
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I can call my sister in the UK for free. For work, we use Teams. A landline is just an extra bill for a service we no longer need.” This trend presents a significant challenge for state-owned fixed-line operatorTelOne.
While the company has been pivoting towards providing broadband internet services, the sharp decline in its core voice revenue stream underscores the need for a rapid and successful transformation. “The PSTN is becoming a legacy network,” explained technology consultant Brian Ndlovu. “The future is IP-based (Internet Protocol).
The focus for operators now is not on carrying voice calls, but on providing the robust data pipelines that power everything fromOTTcalls to streaming and smart homes. The closure of fixed-line voice services is not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’.”
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