The popularity of Private WiFi bundles was on the rise considering that affordable data is almost unheard of in Zim.
Econet recently sent an SMS to subscribers informing them that the data and SMS bundles would be getting reviewed on the 5th of May.
Dear Customer. Please note bundle prices for Data and SMS will be reviewed effective 5 May 2020. Dial *143# to buy Data or *140# to buy SMS Bundles.
Whilst customers have become accustomed to seeing this dreaded message, it’s fair to assume that many did not expect it to result in an adjustment for pricing of WiFi bundles, since that has not been there case before.
Well, those have been adjusted and boy are they expensive now;
| Data allocation | old price | new price | % increase |
| 25GB | ZW$400 | ZW$1300 | 225% |
| 50GB | ZW$800 | ZW$2000 | 250% |
A case for both sides…
Telecoms companies have complained and pushed the narrative that they are not making enough money a number of times.
Every month or two we hear POTRAZ’s DG Dr Gift Machengete coming declaring that hyperinflation has put pressure on the companies and made pricing unsustainable;
Right now we have a disparity because these tariffs have got to go up. There’s no way they can remain as low as we would want them and the ones which were so low for a long time – it was because operators were discounting and some were promotions, which they have removed.
Dr Gift Machengete – POTRAZ Director General
Moral of the story: telecoms companies want consumers to understand they are not making money.
What telecoms companies are failing to understand however is that consumers are just like them when it comes to making money right now. Very few people are privileged enough to have seen their salaries tripled or quadrupled so price increases like the most recent one will only result in people using the internet less because they simply cannot afford to use it.
eLearning: Forget and smile…
One last thing; The government has been urging students, parents and learning institutions to adopt eLearning. Considering that the biggest mobile network provider with over 10m subscribers adjusts pricing of internet data once a month – that is yet another spanner in the works. eLearning was already a hard sale in Zimbabwe and as time passes and cost of internet data increases -it will only get worse from here.
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