Today we attended an operations update and what was also a “Who are we” update by Liquid Telecom in Zimbabwe. At the event, the Zimbabwe managing director, Wellington Makamure addressed the press, customers and business partners on the strides Liquid has made in Zimbabwe in recent months especially to do with its now 2,700 km fibre network.
One of the key updates shared was that the company, as UNWTO conference official partner, has connected all major hotels and lodges in Victoria Falls via fibre in preparation for the General Assembly conference to take place next month. We live tweeted the event with hashtag #LiquidTelecom so some of you are already in on the updates. Here are the main points presented:
- The company now has total 10G capacity and is upgrading to 30G capacity by end of September
- Liquid now has rings of self-healing fibre in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare and Victoria Falls
- It also has direct customer links totaling 1,600km of fibre with fibre now available for residential customers in Borrowdale Brooke, Milton Park, Belgravia, Kensington, and parts of the Harare CBD and the Avenues. Asked why they were not laying fibre to homes in high density suburbs, Makamure said that it was purely a business decision to connect high value customers early and recoup some of the investment in the infrastructure. Their strategy for low income neighbourhoods, he said, was to install WiFi hotspots using fibre that is available along main roads even in those areas.
- The company is laying about 2.6 km of fibre a day with sometimes even 4 km laid a day.
- The Fibre to the Home (FTTH) that is now available in some residential areas and is being laid will allow Liquid customers to have other services like voice calls of the internet (VoIP), Video On Demand services (services like those offered by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime in the US).
- In future, said Makamure, the company looks to partner content providers, both locally and globally to have TV services that use the fibre.
- Makumure said Liquid Telecom is the first in Zimbabwe, and one of the first on the continent to implement fibre using the a new technology of fibre called Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON)
- Liquid also gave an update on the continental operations saying they are now in 9 countries on the continent and they feed connectivity to their operations from 5 undersea cable systems; SEACOM, WACS, SAT-3, EASSy and TEAMS.
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These are good news indeed to some of us who are pro poor. I was also thinking aloud about wifi ofloading here https://zimsmartphones.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/wifi-offloading-why-are-telecel-econet-and-netone-not-bitting/ and wham I hear that mobile hotspots will be available in low income areas…. we can’t wait for TV since SABC took away their channels.. these are good news indeed
Driving network to your site? Why not mention the content and use your profile to link to your site?
I guess if techzim doesnt mind, its ok
Yes we know Liuid a company that has MONOPOLY in carrying international voice traffic from outside Zimbabwe into Zimbabwe although there is NO need of a licence to send or receive data packets over an IP connection. Too bad Liquid you can not fight the sme technology that you are promoting.It is called hypocrisy.
Though I personally deteste Liquid and their company Econet that have exhorbitant internet prices, I shall actually comment on them in the positive as what they are doing is actually really great.
Firstly, Zim is actually a really small country with an even smaller population compared to nations with the same rate of tech development we’re having. So the fact that liquied is even doing all of this investing in here is great news as they could have easily ignored Zim and invest in other “hot” emerging markets.
These developments can also pave the way for Zim to sort of become a Southern Africa fibre hub as we’re centrally located giving us the advantage of being able to quickly link two countries across our borders with fibre as lets face it, our fibre networks are pretty much reliable as there are many duplicate fibre paths….which is a good thing imo as it provides redundancy.
Indeed they should let the people willing to pay the current crazy fibre prices pay thus allowing Liquid to recoup some investment though I certainly hope they only plan on this rapid recoupment maybe for a small percentage of their investment and then they can lower their prices to realistic levels for the mass market and recoup their investment over a greater period of time as Im pretty sure they’re making killer profits from other countries and maybe they can spare their homeland Zim from their skyrocket consumer prices.
Fibre to the home is where the money is in the next 5-10years if done properly. Why?…DSTV’s pricing is just stupid especially with their unexplained annual price increase. So if Liquid can secure sport and premium content on their FTTH network, then they can bet I’ll be a customer.
I really do believe high density surburbs need fast internet as there are some crazy smart kids there that just need reliable affordable internet to teach themselves how to code and build some amazing products. So if Liquid can really pull through on that promise, then I think the benefits will be great. Though us being in Zim, this promising of possibly affordable, useable wifi to the masses seems a bit of aPR promise. We’ll see.
On the other hand, instead of spending more money for these high density hotspots, why not just reduce their Econet data bundles prices. Their HSPA network is plenty fast enough for most internet users.
So Liquid owns this website today. Nxca!
Point of Correction..TELCO(Telecontract) was the first to implement GPON technology..they just didn’t publicise it.
Another point of correction.Telco implements GEPON, which is standardized through the IEEE process while Liquid is implementing GPON, which is standardized through the ITU process.The other diff is GEPON is symmetrical and GPON is not.
I can’t comment on Telco specifically. But from a Liquid perspective, we are doing GPON which is asymmetrical – however the speeds are so high that it has little practical significance (given how asymmetric Internet traffic is). Our GPON operates at 2.5gb/s downstream. There is an upgrade path to 10gb/s downstream. As you know electronic prices constantly drop – there is no point in spending a fortunate today for the absolute latest when the demand is not there. Upgrading to faster speeds is very easy – and will not be so expensive in the future. The high cost is digging the hole, laying the duct, blowing the fibre and connecting your house. Once that is done we can do active component upgrades very quickly and easily.
i love it thank u Behr
[…] The most visible Fibre to the Home (FTTH) package in Zimbabwe right now has to be ZOL Fibroniks. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) has managed to offer this service to the market because of the extensive fibre roll out being constructed by its parent company, Liquid Telecom. […]
[…] The most visible Fibre to the Home (FTTH) package in Zimbabwe right now has to be ZOL Fibroniks. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) has managed to offer this service to the market because of the extensive fibre roll out being constructed by its parent company, Liquid Telecom. […]
[…] centre-piece for the new packages from ZOL, the Internet Service Provider that is now part of the Liquid Group. In Harare, the most visible work around fibre rollout in residential areas carried the Liquid […]