Category Posts: Connectivity

How under the sun do you launch a product, one of whose main points of interface with customers is the web, without having the web platform ready?

In October 2010, Africom made a bold unprecedented move in the history of the internet in Zimbabwe. Fresh from the launch of its new red brand and mobile broadband services, the company announced the pricing of its data packages; the cost of a 1 gigabyte bundle was US $18. It was crazy. It was fantastic for the customers. We celebrated. For the first time in Zimbabwe, here was a company that understood that the internet was not a luxury for rich.

A year ago, US $50 per month unlimited broadband was only offered by one internet provider, the state owned PowerTel. Many would argue doesn’t really ‘need’ to make money. It wasn’t the best internet in town, largely because of congestion issues, but PowerTel afforded many small businesses and middle income earners an opportunity to have their own internet connection for the first time. The rest of the providers had prices north of $100 for any type broadband, forget unlimited.

Today, we attended the Econet VoIP launch we wrote about yesterday. We speculated a lot yesterday about what exactly the product is so we’re quite excited to reveal the accurate details today. Those of you that follow us on Twitter received the news in real-time as we heard it in the morning so no new stuff here for them.

One of the interesting things presented at last week’s JumpStart event, was the rise in mobile penetration in Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2011. The actual significant rise started in 2009 but 2006 shows just how low it was just a little over 5 years ago, 848,000 subscribers.

Just when everyone had agreed that Econet and the other GSM mobile operators are scared of VoIP, the largest telecommunications firm in Zimbabwe has come out to launch that very service. Tomorrow, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe will launch Econet VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) at an event to be held in Harare.

We just got news that Zimbabwe Online (ZOL) has been acquired by the Liquid Telecommunications Group. ZOL is now officially part of the Liquid Telecom Group. From the information available to us so far, ZOL will remain an independent company in terms of branding and operations.

I had a chance to see the “hot” mobile phones in Wedza in all their shapes and sizes. The Chinese made models topped the list perhaps because of their key features – dual sim support, high audio output, multimedia support (ability to play a range of audio file formats, record audio/video clips and snap JPEG photos with reasonable resolution).

Another exciting year in information technologies lies ahead with a lot of promise for the continued growth of the sector. Below, we provide our thoughts on what we think 2012 holds. It would be great to know what you the reader think in the comments.

In 2010, Ecoweb (and Econet subsidiary) was first to come out with the message that they had launched a 4G internet service. The company had just launched its mobile WiMax platform April 2010; a first in Zimbabwe. Of course consumers had no idea what this 4G thing was. The real benefit a lot of people saw wasn’t the speed that the new generation was supposed to offer, it was the mobility.

Last week I ranted a little about walking into TelOne and basically getting the kind customer service that makes you want to shop elsewhere. Small problem with that is the fact that TelOne runs a monopoly on ADSL services right now so there’s no taking the business elsewhere. But ranting about it helps sometimes. It did in this case.

With less than two days left before the close of the year, we thought we’d post a listing of all the top stories we covered this year. This has been our busiest year since.

Back in October, NetOne announced to its postpaid (some call them contract) subscribers that its mobile broadband tests, which had been running before that date, had come to an end. NetOne invited the post paid subscribers to enable internet browsing on their lines and be charged US $40 for unlimited usage a month. Quite the attractive offer when compared to other mobile networks.

Yesterday, I walked into TelOne to ask about the landline application I submitted some 3 months ago. 30 September 2011 to be exact. I need the landline for ADSL broadband internet. TelOne as you know is the state owned sole fixed line operator (and provider of ADSL services) in Zimbabwe. The operator decided on a monopoly of ADSL broadband internet and won’t let ISPs in on the ‘bulk’ ADSL. Their ADSL internet is reliable, quite the option too if, like me, you’re looking for some low cost internet.

Since the launch of its mobile broadband internet services, Telecel has maintained that the pricing, US 10 cents per megabyte of data, was for pilot testing purposes only. Part of that is of course the fact that they commenced the commercial bit of rolling out their internet without seeking the regulator’s approval and they had to reimburse customers when POTRAZ directed them to. They decided to just leave it at that until today.