Below is the full description of the achievement of ICT Project of the year Public Sector award winner, NetOne. The text has been posted here unedited.
Solar Powered Base Stations in Rural Area
Project Impact
This project had a positive impact to society in that NetOne bridged the communication divide in all ten provinces of Zimbabwe were power outages are frequent. NetOne set up solar powered base stations in hard hit areas such that there is constant connectivity for the masses in the affected areas. This gave access to an array of Value Added Services that are specific to rural areas which are exclusive to NetOne subscribers and also the concept was pioneered by NetOne.
Project Innovation
The innovation is that there are huge power outages in the country owing to a low capacity in power generation by ZESA. As a result most base stations lost connectivity for days on end. NetOne then came up with solar powered base stations and reaching out the the rural communities generally with reduced tariffs packaged in a product called Home Zone Billing. This is where a cluster of people who are registered to one base station call call a selected people at a lower tariff.
You can click the links below to read achievements by the other winners of Zimbabwe ICT 2010 Achievers Awards:
ICT Company of the Year: Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
ICT Businessman of the Year: Douglas Mboweni
ICT Businesswoman of the Year: Rudo Mudavanhu
ICT Journalist of the Year: Mqhele Tshuma
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