You’ve been asking and we now have a few answers. Econet has been facing some network challenges for a few days now.
This was the communication a couple of days ago:
We are facing a technical challenge, affecting recharge and some banking services. We regret the inconvenience caused and are working to restore normal service. Thank you for your continued loyalty and support.
The problem is yet to be fully resolved, although we did see some services restored.
You can now top up your airtime using recharge cards. Buy airtime from an Econet vendor near you. Dial *121*recharge key#.
In this case, it did make sense to be excited about that particular service coming back because as far as we have observed, calls, SMS and the internet were working as normal for the most part.
So, you could go the physical recharge card route, however inconvenient, and you would be able to do what you gotta do. That’s assuming what you do doesn’t depend on USSD. Yeah, that’s still to be fixed.
So, what happened at Econet?
So, what’s going on at Econet? We asked them and here’s what they told us. The technical challenge was caused by
… a major data centre fault that affected a significant number of servers.
Now, to unpack this, a data centre to Econet is a physical facility that houses critical IT infrastructure, specifically servers, storage systems, and networking equipment.
Econet is saying a fault at their data centre affected several servers and those are high-powered computers designed for continuous operation and data processing. As a result,
It affected ancillary services that are based on applications that run on the data centre, that do recharge channels, USSD-based VAS, USSD-based third-party services and some admin applications.
What does that mean? Well, here are some of the roles that the data center plays for Econet:
- Housing core network equipment – which includes Mobile Switching Centers (route calls and messages between mobile devices and Packet Core (EPC) (Manages data traffic within the mobile network). Luckily, this core network was not affected like last time because when this is down, nobody’s calling anyone or Googling anything.
- Service Delivery and Content Hosting – here we are talking Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) which allow Econet to store (cache) frequently accessed content closer to users, reducing latency and improving content delivery speeds. And we are also talking Value-Added Services (VAS), which were affected by the data centre fault in question.
The data centre supports Econet in delivering various value-added services like mobile banking, mobile TV, and USSD-based services. These services often require dedicated servers and storage resources. So, when some servers were knocked out, VAS services were affected.
When will all this be fixed?
It’s hard to say. It’s one of those ‘it will be done when it’s done’ kind of moments. However, Econet says,
We are working to restore the rest of the services on a priority basis (in terms of customer usage).
That sounds like a good way to go about it. Start with those services that affect the most people. Although this potentially means a problem that only requires 6 man hours could wait days to be fixed because it affects fewer people.
The only problem is that they are still people with real needs but they get to play second fiddle because there aren’t that many of them. In fact, that all brings us to…
Any inconvenience caused…
We all know how that statement ends and if we’re being honest, we’re numb to it. Who really believes they sincerely regret these inconveniences? It’s not just Econet here too. I think they somewhat regret it.
Here’s why I think that. Imagine you’re getting a haircut and Mnangagwa tip toes in, yanks the clippers from your barber and runs out with them. Your barber apologises, of course, and Mnangagwa brings them back after 30 minutes or so and the cut is completed.
The 10th time this happens, your barber’s apology won’t be sincere. He’s probably thinking ‘You know that I’m dealing with a sitting president confiscating my clippers knowing there’s little I can do about it.’
Econet and other businesses in Zimbabwe feel like the economy has done them dirty, which it has, and so we should be sympathetic to their struggles. The economy keeps yanking their clippers after all.
That’s all understandable, however, when you miss out on a life-changing opportunity because of a fault at a data centre you know nothing about, you don’t care who yanked what clippers.
I have conversed with several people who have lost days’ worth of business because of this and are livid. So many businesses now depend on *XXX# for their business and having USSD-based services down for days is unacceptable to them.
Some even believe Econet is sabotaging them by yanking their USSD whilst keeping its own up. It would make for a good story but it can’t be true because even Econet and EcoCash’s USSD services are down.
So, we cry out, ‘Why don’t they invest in better infrastructure or improve their redundancy to avoid situations like these?’ They would probably remind us about the forex challenges, high taxes and low tariffs they are contending with, which limit their capacity to repair and maintain their equipment, let alone invest in new and better stuff.
Then the typical Zimbo retorts, ‘Kana zvanetsa chingovharisai zvinhu zvacho (if you can’t do it properly, just shut down the business)’ to which I would reply, ‘I would rather have slow internet than no internet at all.’
Listen, I say this as someone who hasn’t felt the brunt of this but it’s no laughing matter. We need less of these outages. Faults are faults though and they happen with no warning so, it is what it is.
To the NetOne users out there
Techzim is affected too and *405# is down. However, NetOne users are not limited to physical recharge cards.
You can purchase your airtime here on the website (go to the home page and scroll below the article), via WhatsApp (+263717684274), or via our app if you have it installed.
Also read:
The few headlines below on recent Econet outages don’t make for inspiring reading.
- Econet – multiple power failures at network operations centre to blame for outage
- Econet data outage caused by core network “incident”. MNO says service is back up
- If TelOne was in the UK, customers would get USD11.00 a day for an internet outage
- BancABC VISA card services “partially” back online after a days-long outage
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