Telecel skins Opera Mini, offers free access to Facebook Page

We’re getting information that Telecel Zimbabwe subscribers who use Opera Mini on their mobile phones can now access the Telecel website and Facebook Page for free. We’re gathering that the promotion started yesterday in the morning.

Apparently, to make it as easy as possible to access the free urls, Telecel is automatically placing 3 bookmarks on the Opera Mini browser default page on subscribers’ mobile phones. If you’re a Telecel subscriber you will notice that some of your home page bookmarks will be replaced by those of the official Telecel website, the Telecel Facebook Page and their Twitter account.

Telecel’s Facebook likes shot yesterday from just 1,100 to 3,800 today. That’s more than 2,000 likes within 24 hours! The page will surely serve as a convenient and low cost channel to make some announcements, market products and engage subscribers.

Telecel has also apparently ended a free GPRS data promotion that they launched last year.

So far the changes it has caused quite a stir among the subscribers who were posting messages on the Telecel Facebook Page yesterday non-stop. Some are praising the mobile operator and a few are not amused at all that Telecel ended the ‘free GPRS’ promotion and decided replace user created bookmarks with its own without asking.

Telecel has since disabled posting by fans to their wall for some reason.

A post by Telecel on their Facebook page yesterday says the changes are the result of an agreement between Telecel and Opera to essentially skin Opera Mini automatically for all Telecel subscribers on mobile broadband.

Strangely, the official Telecel website to which one of the bookmarks is linked is still under construction.

We have contacted Telecel for more information and we’re yet to get the details.

Correction: Telecel Zimbabwe has advised us, via Facebook, that they did not disable posting by fans to their Facebook. They just set the default age to show their posts only. Visitors to the page can still choose to show all posts.

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