The ARPTC has released the statistics for the first quarter of 2023 for the mobile telephony market.
According to its data, the DRC recorded during this period, 53.6 million subscriptions against 49.8 million in the last quarter of 2022, i.e. a growth of 7.69%.
Talking about the turnover of this sector, the ARPTC by its observatory of the sector of the mobile telephony market revealed that the sector recorded a turnover of 48.65 million USD, against 528.95 million the last year, This represents a decrease of 13.27%.
With regard to subscriptions to mobile Internet services, the regulatory authority notes an increase of 8.69%.
With regard to mobile Internet turnover, it also reports an increase of 4.47%.
For the number of active users of mobile money services, there was an INCREASE of around 31.7%1 compared to Q4-22, i.e. from 13.825 to 18.206 million users with a rate of 19.1% penetration.
On the other hand, there is a drastic drop in mobile money turnover of around 96.7%, ie from 66.4 million USD to 2.2 million USD. Explaining the drop, the ARPTC said:
« This decrease was induced by the changes that occurred during the period in the composition of mobile money turnover, which now only takes into account the commissions paid by Mobile Financial Companies (MFS) to mobile network operators. (ORMs/MNOs) for using their USSD codes and messaging services (SMS); income relating to financial transactions being turnover specific to the MFS “, she explained.
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Voice services and SMS
The 1st Quarter of 2023, reported the Observatory, was marked by a drop in traffic on voice services and SMS services, respectively of around 6.13% and 0.87%, with an average time of use of the telephone per minute/subscriber/month (MoU) which also experienced a drop of around 12.83%.
Finally, the ARPTC made it clear that mobile Internet traffic increased by around 5.7%, from 142.115 billion to 150.222 billion megabytes.
It should be noted that the ARPTC is a structure set up by the Congolese government to:
Ensure compliance with laws, regulations and conventions in the field of posts and telecommunications and suggest any legislative or regulatory changes;
Ensure that citizens benefit from the services provided using new information and communication technologies;
Cooperate with other national and foreign authorities having the same object. Represent the DRC in international organizations in the field of posts and telecommunications;
Define the principles of intercommunications and pricing of public services. Manage and control frequency spectra. Give the authorizations and write the specifications of the corresponding authorizations.
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Emongo Gerome