In a response to an email we sent them, Telco (Telecontract) revealed that they’re working on a mobile broadband service to be launched in 2011. Telco says “deployment of the first base stations is underway and commissioning of the commercial services is scheduled for early in 2011.”
It’s not clear yet what mobile internet technology the service will be based on but that’s likely to be WiMax or CDMA.
Telco will become the fifth telecommunications provider to offer mobile broadband in Zimbabwe, after Econet, Africom, PowerTel and TelOne.
Econet, the largest by subscribers and capacity, launched 3G services last year to a limited group of subscribers. Econet’s 3G was relaunched this year to all subscribers under the brand Econet Broadband and has registered massive uptake in the market.
Africom, the second largest by number of subscribers also has, also launched mobile broadband services based on CDMA 2000 (a 3G technology) in the past few months.
The smallest but oldest contenders, state owned PowerTel and TelOne, both have consumer mobile broadband offerings based on CDMA technologies.
Share
Home
5 comments
Can Telco become a serious wireless internet provider? Somehow I doubt it! I put them in the same class as Powertel. The Powertel modem I bought last month ground to a halt! I won’t bother with Powertel’s subscription any more. The one provider I am keeping my an eye on is Telecel, and Econet switching on their fibre networking supposedly this week!
All these guys are not very serious. All along Africom claimed the 1GB for $18 is a prepayment only to find that once you purchase a modem and the first moth subs its a contract that you are paying a mandatory $18/month whether you want or you dont want to use it for that particular month!
i bought my africom dongle and used it over the weekend. i think the speeds are better than other service prividers like powertel and econet. i was able to browse and do my skype calls without fail on the africom dongle. i thinks it works fine.
telco is not serious it cant even pay its employess on time later on they now wnat to launch broadband.am a family member of one of the workers and we are going kuchristmas without any slaries.be serious telco
Africom has the better speed of the four but thier pricing policies are incompetent, they charge $20 for 1gig, which should be finished within a month, however if you do finish that 1gig within that month, if you want to purchase more data bundles you would have to pay for example for 100MB $10, for 200MB $20, which means if you want 1GB you would have to pay $100.. to me that is absurd!