Dial-up use in Zimbabwe declines by 99.4% as national fixed telecoms operator phases out old school technology

If you mention dial-up in Zimbabwe most people who’ll relate with it are folks that jumped on the internet bandwagon in the late nineties and early 2000s when broadband wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now.

Even though it’s old and has been overtaken by other types of broadband technology, dial-up has still got some presence in Zimbabwe and as recently as September 2015 there were over 7,000 active connections. In fact, at some point, it was registering a growth pattern.

Now, TelOne, Zimbabwe’s fixed telecoms provider that activated dial-up services in the first place has started phasing it out. According to the telecoms regulator, POTRAZ active dial-up connections were whittled down from a total of 6,872 in December 2015 to just 44 active connections at the beginning of April 2016.

This represents 99.4% decline in active connections. TelOne has been aggressively rolling out other forms of broadband technology like fibre and it is set to launch an LTE network. At the same time, it’s been growing the number of users on its ADSL network as well.

Like other forms of migration from earlier forms of technology terminating dial up is likely a response to the challenges that come with maintaining older systems while trying to accommodate newer and more efficient solutions.