Recently, Telecel introduced a voice for data promotion. For every $1 worth of airtime purchased, subscribers receive $1 worth of data for free. The company has not yet rolled out a formal campaign to launch its data services which have been operating under the radar for nearly two months. Prior to this the network has been running a trial service for over one and a half years.
The promotion is a welcome development locally for small to mid level data users and perfectly suites those mobile only usage. Telecel’s data capabilities were previously questionable as it did not control any access to international bandwidth and thus was slow and erratic. Techzim has reached out to the company to find out its position in this regard.
Telecel currently charges US$0.10 per megabyte. We have communicated with the company to find out how long the free data promotion will last. With the new offer Telecel effectively out dribbles its competition.
Econet Wireless, the nation’s leading network has a robust data network through its strategic relationship with Liquid Telecom, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless International. With the largest number of mobile subscribers in the country (almost 3 times the size of the second largest), Econet has taken advantage of the its near monopoly status to charge high data rates (US$0.15 per megabyte currently).
The state owned mobile network; NetOne recently flighted press ads promoting its upcoming data services. As a parastatal, the company has an advantage of piggybacking on TelOne’s international fibre bandwidth (through EASSy) or through PowerTel’s SEACOM access. Powertel actually operates from NetOne’s Kopje building. The pricing strategy is yet to be seen. As recently reported, Telecel’s bigger brother advantage in the Vimpelcom Group will lead to a lot of cost and expertise advantages as the group is the sixth largest telecoms operator in the world.
Africom, a CDMA network and Internet Access Provider, has silently gained data customers through its game changing $18 for 1 Gig campaign (and US$0.11 for a megabyte thereafter). The company is now making a leap towards voice services. Its major undoing is the second fiddle position CDMA has found itself in around the world as GSM is the defacto standard worldwide. The ‘why buy another phone’ debate can perhaps be answered by the cheaper (by more than half) voice costs the operator and others (Spiritage and PowerTel) are charging.
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13 comments
Does anyone know who the guys in Blue Worksuits with the words “Amazing Ville” on the back are digging and laying fibre all over town?
take a guess.
Since Micro$haft bought Skype and turned things upside down and PowerTel doing there best to annoy me, l replaced Skype with Fring and PowerTel with Telecel. For the last 2 weeks l been enjoying video calling from mobile to mobile.
Well done Telecel!
Telecel definitely! They maybe small and their coverage may not be as widespread but I like the focus they on their business. Their internet service is definitely improving no question about that but it does have its moments. When those moments come I switch back Africom and when Africom has it’s moments, well you get the idea! Using both Africom and Telecel at the same time interchangeably my internet experience is virtually perfect and up-time 95% onwards.
thanks telecel Does anybody get the your ip has changed on econet when you try downloading from rapidshare
With all this Seacom excitement just wondering has anybody seen any changes in their browsing xperience.Well Telecel have this offer and thats all i have seen so far
Not really, but Telecel is bringing reliability at affordable prices. The internet i Zim have not made an remarkable speeds improvement with all these connections to undersea cable, but l like the way Telecel is presenting itself
This is a very interesting campaign Telecel Keep it up
Correction people….. Econet is also 10c to the mb using the bundles.
Actually Econet is charging $0.11 to $0.075 per MB depending on the ‘bundle’ purchased (For $1 one gets 10MB which is $0.10 per MB) Thats what you say Telecel is charging ($0.10 per MB) which is bloody expensive. Telecel therefore seems to be following Econet’s pricing lead instead of changing the game. However hats off to Telecel for the promotion.
its not about who is connected to which submarine cable but , who’s base stations are NOT congested. telecel HAS fast internet for teh moment, wait untill they gain more subscribers, then things start to slowwwwww down. from my experiences Africom has good things going, i hear they are expanding they network coverage very rapidly…. hence less congestion.
thanks to telecel and skype now i skype my folks in Europe with the FREE mega data bundle. Waiting to see how econet responds to this promotion i have stopped using econet for my internet- why buy when you can get it for free. The other day i had one hour of Skype with video for $4 free of Telecel bundles
Amazingville has not cleaned up my carpark for 5 weeks now! Imagine, when I signed the release I thought they would put it back to how it was but it is just a mess. Be warned !