Guroo is Africom’s new VoIP service. Our initial thoughts

L.S.M Kabweza Avatar
Guroo

GurooYou may have noticed Guroo over the past several days. Or Guro-o if we go by the new service’s  domain name and logo. It’s a product by Africom and in case you are wondering how that’s pronounced, it’s ‘guru’ as in expert. It’s a new VoIP service the company has launched. Africa’s first, they are saying.

You can access the service on guro-o.com where you can register for a VoIP account. Once you are registered you can use a VoIP client of your choice but Guroo makes it easy by providing downloads of the most popular clients as well as providing links to VoIP apps in the Google Play Store and Apple Store. Once you are setup, you can buy credit from the guro-opay.com website where you have the option to pay either using Paypal, Visa or ZimSwitch Vpayments. Unfortunately when we tried to use Vpayments (which is the option that will be most available to most users in Zimbabwe) we got this error.

But Guro-o may not be targeted primarily at people in Zimbabwe. The good broadband VoIP requires as a minimum is very pricey and unaffordable for most people here. So we’ll assume it’s targeted at the international market; Africa? The Diaspora? But now out there the competition is not just traditional mobile telephony; there’s Skype and other VoIP services like it so the only cheap call destination will be Zimbabwe. We’re not sure how big a proposition that is but let’s see.

Africom logoThat brings us to tariffs. We are told they are the same as the regular Africom voice tariffs, that is calls to other Guroo (and Africom) numbers are 6 cents per minute and those to other Zim networks 12 cents. Other Zim networks, a source at Africom told us, doesn’t include NetOne. We’re shocked it has taken this long to interconnect!

Of course we’re not buying the “Africa’s first” claims. It’s a VoIP service and there’s nothing first about VoIP in Zimbabwe, let alone Africa. We don’t think they were serious about that so wild claims aside, Africom coming out with guns aimed at mobile telephony is exciting and a sign of changes to sweep the market. Remember Econet launched a similar service last year, and immediately went into hush mode with it, realising it would canibalise a healthy GSM voice cash cow. VoIP’s time is at the beginning and Africom realises they need a foot in. Econet, we’re told, also realises they need to come back actively into VoIP and they’re doing it via an internet subsidiary.

Unlike regular mobile telephony, rolling out VoIP is not dependent on expensive network  infrastructure so a foot in first for Africom is a big deal if they can market it well and make money from it!

 

10 comments

  1. Shepherd Nhongo

    afri-voip could’ve been a better name than guroo.

  2. beezy

    could’ve sworn it looked like telecel

  3. Nigella Rauben

    does this mean that voip is now legal in your country?

    1. biNu Zimbabwe

      Yes, has it ever been illegal?

      The only challenge has been the amount of bandwidth being supplied by the internet providers/mobile networks was not sufficient to support such.

    2. Robert Ndlovu

      VoIP used to be illegal in Zim till 2007 when we pressed on POTRAZ. But since the convergence of internet and voice and IM local regulations are lagging behind whats happening.Econet is one company that has mixed feelings about the emergence of VoIP.On the left hand they make money from bringing in calls expensively from say UK using VoIP on their MPLS network over fibre .On the right had they are rolling out broadband which will further push cellular clients away from cellphones to IP based communications.Voice revenues are destined for doom.Its a question of time.Ask postal services what happened to the postage stamp.

  4. Ndaba Sibanda

    Yea some Bulawayo dude was taken to court by Econet and Econet apparently lost.This is interesting indeed to see how POTRAZ will react.

  5. Tapiwa ✔

    I signed up for the service & configured my preferred VOIP client(C3Sip). I bought a $5 voucher using Paypal & never got the PIN via email (as promised). The “Contact Us” link on the website is a dead-end, so I emailed the payments email out of desperation.

    So anyone who’s tempted to buy the airtime via Paypal, don’t do it! Consider yourself warned.

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