It’s been nearly a month since Econet subscribers began complaining about painfully slow speeds on SmartBiz, the mobile network’s “unlimited” data package. Despite the backlash Econet has yet to offer an official explanation.
Just for background: SmartBiz launched in June 2024, just as it became clear Starlink would be entering the Zim market. One package stood out – $45 per month for unlimited data at 5Mbps, with a 1TB “soft cap”. It was an immediate hit. For the first time, even before Starlink’s official arrival, many felt the internet had finally become affordable in Zimbabwe.
From what Techzim gathers, for about a year that 1TB soft limit wasn’t even enforced – no caps, no throttling. It’s unclear if this was by design or just oversight, but customers weren’t complaining.
Unsurprisingly, usage skyrocketed. From what we understand, the surge in demand soon exposed a basic flaw in the product design – Some customers pulled so much data it was unsustainable.
To make matters worse (at least for Econet), the $45 price tag meant that heavy users – we’re guessing businesses, it is after all called SmartBiz – were consuming massive amounts of data without delivering equivalent revenue. A small percentage of customers, from what we gather, accounted for the bulk of the traffic across the entire SmartBiz user base – the classic 80/20!
Enter the Cap, Quietly
Eventually, Econet decided to act. They reduced the soft cap for the $45 packaged from 1TB to 200GB. An 80% reduction. The other packages were probably affected too, but it’s the $45 one that’s been the focus.
And here’s the kicker – the affected customers were not told terms had changed. These customers, noticing their internet had slowed to a crawl, only found out after calling customer service to complain. This lack of transparency is what triggered the wave of frustration and backlash on social media that’s yet to die down. Some customers have even started a change.org petition.
It appears the product was designed based on historical data from capped bundles like Private WiFi. The Assumption? No one would really ever reach 1TB, and even if a tiny few did, it wouldn’t significantly affect network performance. That assumption clearly didn’t hold. Zimbos will eat every little bit you let.
The regulator, POTRAZ, has been mentioned and tagged quite a bit on social media. It’s clear Econet implemented an FUP cap lower than advertised (SmartBiz website still says a 1TB fup cap as we write this). This means a conversation is likely going on right now between POTRAZ and Econet. But as far as we know, Potraz too hasn’t said anything on this.
What’s Next?
We don’t know if Econet will insist on the 200GB cap. We hope not. An 80% reduction of anything is just too much. For businesses, such a low cap can’t really be termed unlimited so it defeats the purpose altogether. Better to just label it a 200GB bundle!
We also understand Econet could be considering geo-locking the service, as a way to ensure they can manage traffic better across the network. Geo-locking which internet providers use, is already hated quite a bit. In fact Econet would be taking away the product features that made it standout from the competition.
Different categories of SmartBiz will also likely be introduced, so that the extremely heavy users pay a higher fee for their usage.
Econet is essentially re-designing SmartBiz.
We can’t help wonder how Starlink limitations in Harare factor into all this. In June 2024, when SmartBiz launched, Econet was panicked. Starlink eventually came and the reality is that the satellite technology fills up at very low subscriber numbers. It seems Harare will be sold out for some time.
The threat is not as huge is as everyone imagined, so things have settled for now.
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