Econet Relaunches Buddie With International Roaming

L.S.M Kabweza Avatar

Econet New BuddieECONET Wireless has relaunched its premier prepaid package, Buddie, loaded with a new bouquet of value added services, including the country’s first prepaid roaming service.

Econet has united all its prepaid packages under the single Buddie brand, CEO Mr Douglas Mboweni said.

“We have upgraded our system to unify all our prepaid customers under the Buddie brand,” Mr Mboweni said.

The unified new Buddie brand will be loaded with some new services, currently not available in Zimbabwe. Today, for example, Econet unveils the country’s first prepaid international roaming services, allowing Econet prepaid customers to use their Econet lines in neighbouring countries. The service has previously only been available to contract customers.

Econet has already sealed roaming agreements with Cell-C of South Africa, Mascom of Botswana, Zain Zambia and Mozambique’s M-Cell. “This means customers travelling to these countries can carry their Econet lines with them. When you get there, you just switch over to the partner network in that country, and use your phone. You no longer have to switch SIM cards when travelling in the region.”

Mr Mboweni said prepaid roaming was unique to Econet and it is being launched after months of development. He also indicated that work is in progress to get roaming to more countries in the near future, including the UK and the USA.

In addition to prepaid roaming, the relaunched Buddie will also now have the “missed call alert”. If a customer misses a call because they are busy, out of range, their phone is switched off or when they do not answer a call, an SMS notification is sent to them when they become available, indicating the number and the time of the missed call.

Econet plans to roll out a string of other services including per second billing which state owned mobile operator NetOne launched about a month ago.

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