Usually when a country’s telecoms regulatory body issues out a directive to operators, there’s compliance. Maybe some mourning and whining about it not being in the interest of customers and the operators themselves, but still compliance. Seldom do you hear of an operator defying a regulatory directive. So we are surprised that Econet has chosen the defiance path on the order they got from POTRAZ this week to stop the Buddie Zone promotion and revert to the old tariffs by Friday – today.
We have been making test calls to mobile numbers both on the Econet network and on the Telecel network. The latest we made, about 40 minutes ago, was to a Telecel number and the tariff per minute we noticed was 11.75 cents: before the call the airtime credit balance was 1.6503 and after, 1.5328. Now since the order apparently was for Econet to revert to 25 cents per minute tariffs “by Friday”, this spells defiance.
On Wednesday when we interviewed the Econet CEO on the matter asking him what they were going to do following the directive, his response was: “Let me just emphasize that, they [customers] have been enjoying Buddie Zone, and they will continue enjoying Buddie Zone, because we see nothing wrong with the offering that we have done.”
How however said that there could be some misunderstanding between Econet and the regulator regarding the nature of the promotions and dynamic tariffing.
When POTRAZ issued the directive 3 days ago they didn’t specify what kind of penalty Econet would be hit with for non-compliance. Alfred Marisa, the POTRAZ deputy director general later said this week there are stipulated penalties according to a statutory instrument (We have no information on which one yet) for implementing unapproved tariffs as well as advertising unapproved tariffs. Both rules that according to POTRAZ, Econet apparently flouted.
Update: It’s 24 August 2013, 1020hrs. We just tested the tariff of calls to other networks and as of now the Buddie Zone 10 cents tariff is still applying.
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Buddie Zone is a product/ a service that Econet is offering to its dear customers who stood by it for a long time. POTRAZ know kuti some customer bought those ECONET sim card at very high prices(whole month/two months salaries, cows). It is an economic law that as the company increase its productivity and move through the experience curve, its prices fall as output increase. So now one can buy a sim for free of $0.50. I dont know what instruments POTRAZ possess to regulate such good services in a growing economy. ECONET is a company that God gave to Zimbabwe. The progress of ECONET also help to show that AGRICULTURE cannot the basis for building an economy! I Mr K.Kungeke would want to see which economy was built on AGRICULTURE!!! Sorry for this little digression, sorry!
To me, “by Friday” sounds kinda vague/open to interpretation. Does it mean “strictly before Friday (Thursday 23:59:59)”, or “C.O.B. Friday” or “at the latest, Friday 23:59:59”? there still a couple of hours left till end of Friday, so I wouldn’t call it defiance. It might be, but if it is, it’s subtle and arguable.
The regulators need to properly cross the t’s and dot the i’s: legalese is supposed to be highly precise and POTRAZ seems to have dropped the ball. (I confess I haven’t read the official document sent to Econet).
please MR TechZIm dont rush to conclude defiance before end of day 23.59.59. Most systems are updated during the night when there is less traffic I might think
Saturday morning now, still 10 cents per minute…
Its Saturday. Well….?
We just updated the story. In short the slashed tariffs are still applying.
not across networks. yeintra network yagara iripo yemadaily bundles, the one they were told havana approval was 10c across network which they stopped
Ah Marisa ndiye ave acting Director Inga zvaanenge aitombova munhu aitaurika naye zvema directive zvakapfuura tiudzewo kuti statutory instrumeny yacho ndeipi and uakona Econet yaomesa musoro kudai hapana kana nyaya. Regai tionerere
[…] Currently, the mobile network operators (MNOs) have been giving reports to POTRAZ based on good faith obtaining in any institution of good repute. But let’s face it though, reputation has been questionable in some of the MNOs with the obvious being Telecel and its latest botches with the Telecommunications Ministry and Econet with its tariff adjustment challenges. […]
[…] previous Buddie zone(which was also introduced unofficially at first and later met with some scrutiny from the regulator) was a discount promotion that gave lowered rates of up to 90% for on-net calls depending on the […]