Author: L.S.M Kabweza

  • Zambian mobile money startup closes US $4 million Series A investment

    Zambian mobile money startup closes US $4 million Series A investment

     So what are you meant to think when you start a business with your brother in 2007 and at the start of 2012, you are part of a committed team of 25 employees that close a $ 4 million deal with three world class international fund. Seriously, (four million dollars, thirty two million rand, twenty billion kwacha) for an “African/Zambian” IT start up business

    These are the words of Mobile Transactions International co-founder, Brad Magrath, whose startup has made history in Zambian by closing a US $4 million ‘Series A’ funding round this week. The investment will bring in close to $3 million of new cash into from US based philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network and a non-profit organization ACCION Invest. The additional $1 million is debt converted into equity from Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA).

    Pushing a ‘Cashless Africa’ vision, the Zambian mobile money startup has developed a proprietary integrated switching technology to enable companies to transact with their unbanked and unconnected customers with the help an agent network across the country.

    Mobile Transactions International was founded in 2007 by Brad and his brother Brett initially as a solution for Dunavant (the largest cotton company in Zambian) to make mobile payments to cotton farmers.

    You can read the full press release on the funding here.

  • Aquiva Wireless to launch VoIP by April

    Aquiva WirelessOne of Zimbabwe’s licensed Internet Access Providers (IAP), Aquiva Wireless, will be launching VoIP services by April this year. We got the news from the company this week that they are finalizing interconnection agreements with some of the existing mobile operators and the fixed line operator (TelOne) and will be launching VoIP commercially in the coming weeks.

    The VoIP service is something similar to Econet’s recently launched service which you can access via any broadband internet connection from ordinary PCs or Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

    In terms of tariffs we should expect prices as low (or as high) Africom, Broadcom, Telco and Gigatel. In summary the POTRAZ approved tariffs for VoIP providers; US 5 cents for on-net calls and 11 cents for off-net calls.

    Aquiva chief operations officer, Artwell Mataranyika said that while some existing mobile operators have “not been in a hurry” to interconnect with new VoIP telephony providers like his company, they have nevertheless been responsive and they’ve managed to secure some agreements. He added though without naming any specific operators that a few are deliberately dragging their feet and interconnection agreements with these would take a long while.

    As more and more IAPs launch VoIP services, interconnection remains one the main problems they face getting the product ready for commercial use. Users naturally expect to be able to make calls to any number under the sun when subscribed to a phone service and the realization that they can’t call some networks exposes the issue for the deal breaker it is.

    Telecontract, one for the first IAPs to launch voice services back in 2010, only interconnected (and celebrated the event with ads in the papers) more than a year later and even it was just to one of the three mobile operators, Econet.

  • Econet Wireless uses YouTube for PR in Nigeria dispute with Airtel

    Econet Wireless uses YouTube for PR in Nigeria dispute with Airtel

    Strive Masiyiwa, Econet, on YouTubeIn mega disputes the kind Econet Wireless International fights globally, you need neutral parties seeing things from your angle, and as many voices on your side as you can get. When you understand this the way Econet does, the logical decision to take is to go out there and tell your story; the whole story according to how you saw things unfold from the beginning. Either that or the traditional media will tell it for you. Now the media are known to like taking sides and which side they take depends on many factors beyond anyone’s control making them a very unsafe bet.

    Social media provides a convenient solution to this problem. It has made it possible for people and companies to easily tell their stories and to do it at a very low cost. Econet is taking full advantage of this. On 15 February, an Econet YouTube account, EconetSolar, posted 11 videos of the Founder and Chairman of the group Strive Masiyiwa, telling the Econet side of the story.

    The videos are averagely 3 minutes long and have Masiyiwa speaking about the setting up of Econet Wireless Nigeria, the beginning of the disputes, the parties involved, the 2012 court ruling, his examination of the Bharti Airtel response. The last video in the series has him speaking about what this means for corporate governance in Africa and the rule of law.

    The EconetSolar account itself was created 2 months ago to post videos about the new Econet Solar product launched around the time COP17 time.

    Here’s the first video in the series:

  • Telecel has co-branding testing agreement with Opera Software

    Telecel has co-branding testing agreement with Opera Software

    Telecel, OperaLast week, we posted that Telecel Zimbabwe started pushing updates of a co-branded version of the Opera Mini mobile browser to subscribers. The special Opera Mini browser has some Speed Dial shortcuts set to the Telecel website and its social media pages. We contacted Telecel to give us more information and they responded.

    The response says that Telecel Zimbabwe has a testing agreement with Opera Software to optimise mobile broadband experience for subscribers that use the browser on their mobile phones.

    Here’s an extract of the response:

    Telecel is running a three-month pilot test project with Opera Mini in order to try to optimise the management of data traffic. A decision on whether or not to enter into a commercial agreement with Opera Mini will be taken after about three months.

    A co-branding testing Group Frame Agreement was signed between Opera Mini and Orascom Telecom Holding, which is Telecel companies’ parent company, late last year. Telecel Zimbabwe is benefiting from this agreement.

    Telecel Zimbabwe went live on Opera Mini on Monday this week (February 20).

    Opera Mini is the most popular mobile browser globally. The browser is particularly popular with feature phone users requiring a usable internet experience on EDGE and GPRS connections. Opera Mini’s popularity stems from cloud processing technologies that enable the browser to deliver pages with great speed and minimum usage of a user’s data subscription. Its platform’s technologies also improve compatibility with websites not designed for mobile devices.

    Special Opera Mini performance and skinning deals between Opera Software and mobile network operators are not uncommon and provide a channel for Opera to monetise the free mobile browser.

  • Umuntu shares more information about Mimiboard. Our brief thoughts

    Umuntu shares more information about Mimiboard. Our brief thoughts

    Mimiboard ConceptWe first got information about Mimiboard from the Umuntu founder, Johan Nel, some 9 days ago. Nel was to later announce the new service at the just ended Mobile Web East Africa in Nairobi. He said they’ve had developers working for 7 months to come up with the product which is going to be “a game changer in the African market.”

    The new platform according to Nel is basically a personal virtual notice board of sorts to which an individual can pin stuff of interest to them, have other people communicate with them, contribute their own stuff and even transact on the platform. The service is location aware, offers direct SMS communication between the curator of a board and the people reading it, and even offers a means for ordinary people to create their own newspapers and print them for distribution.

    Today, Umuntu released more information about the service. In today’s release Umuntu provided some usage scenarios to explain the concept. Scenarios like the ones below.

    Online publishing:

    A publisher knows what their readers want to talk about so they create a few Mimiboards for their readers. Daily traffic tips, Classifieds, Restaurant reviews, citizen news, chat room etc. etc.. The publisher saves those Mimiboard as a stack, names the stack (Your News as an example) and then hit the export to embed button. Our Wizard takes them through the steps and quickly a publisher has a fully embedded Mimiboard in his website. iFrame or RSS. So with the click of a few buttons the site has a fully integrated SMS, Android, J2ME and Rich web communications channel to the readers.

    Printing Mimiboards:

    Simon the entrepreneur knows what his community talks about. Lifts offered, goods for sale and obituaries.  He creates those Mimiboards for his town, saves them as a stack, calls the stack The Kafue Daily and he hits publish. Through our Wizard he chooses the layout, paper size, amount of notes to display (last 7 days or only today) He prints it out.

    Getting a cab:

    A Taxi driver printed a sticker on the side of his taxi with his Mimiboard ID. A tourist in the area opens Mimiboard on her phone and looks for Taxi’s in the area. She posts a note on the Taxi available board.

    “Please pick me up at Kibera and take me to the airport. Jane 01282992929”.

    The taxi driver gets a notification, picks her up and drops her at the airport. He updates his Mimiboard again to say that he is available.  A new client uses Android, sees all Mimiboards close to him, he filters the boards to show only taxi available close to his location.

    Market Linkages:

    A fishmonger in Mombasa creates a Mimiboard called: Mombasa Fish Market. He tells all the fisherman to update their catch via SMS, Android, J2ME while they are on the water. He then sits at the market and looks at the latest catch on Mimiboard (some even include photos)

    He spots a great catch and updates comment on the Fisherman’s note “I want those fish please. $3 per KG. Bring them to Thomas Market please.”

    A local in the area also wants to buy fish for dinner tonight. He opens Mimiboard, adds the Fish for sale category filter on his discover screen and also sees the notes of the above transaction.

    So far Umuntu Media has been doing news, and it’s been news the company employs journalists to gather. With Mimiboard Umuntu is taking it further; it wants to give any user the ability to create their own content. And the content doesn’t have to be news or some text content for reading. It can be services, direct communication between individuals or between businesses and all this is location based so that it’s always the most relevant content for the people interacting with it.

    It’s a big promise Umuntu is making, and one not easy to deliver technically or even to get mainstream adoption for. Umuntu is taking on the problem of local content and they‘re not doing it the conventional way. They’re trying new ways, combining features from different services to create a whole new category and understanding of the word ‘portal’. In there you can see Pinterest, Esoko, some Foursquare, possibilities for FMNA style eTXT and Umuntu’s own news portals. It’s so much in one, the risk to attempt being everything to everyone is clear and may cause problems down the road. But let’s see.

    Umuntu Media is the startup behind the local news portal iZimbabwe.co.zw which we covered here a number of times last year. The startup is based in Cape Town, South Africa and Johan Nel is its CEO.

    If you want to get an invite to the beta, you can sign up here.

  • Zimbabwe’s image problem: Facebook caning linked to human rights abuse

    Zimbabwe’s image problem: Facebook caning linked to human rights abuse

    Zimbabwe clearly has an image problem. When we posted a note on Monday about the caning sentence for a Chiredzi boy who ‘slandered’ a local woman on Facebook, we sincerely thought two cane strokes was not a big deal. Really. For us the important thing was that someone had managed to get some kind of assistance from the law for having their image tarnished on Facebook.

    International journos and bloggers had a different take it. The case was liked to human rights abuses.

    Large US media company ABC News for example says in a story they posted on the case:

    Caning is a common judicial punishment in Zimbabwe for boys under the age of 18.  It is also frequently used as a discipline method in schools.  The U.S. State Department’s 2010 Human Rights R0065port on Zimbabwe noted there were numerous reported cases of children suffering severe injuries from corporal punishment at school.

    Another site, New York Daily news, has a picture of a man being caned in the story. Anyone that knows a bit about Zimbabwe knows the photo has little to do with the country.

    A Houston news site, News92FM, repeated the same human rights abuses line by ABC News. All these articles are showing prominently in Google News searches for the story.

    To be fair, some Zimbabwe news sites did much worse reporting on the matter, preferring to twist the facts and make the sentence look ridiculously severe. Take this article by Radio VOP for example that says the boy will spend the next two months in prison. It’s just blatantly incorrect and you wonder why they had to lie about it.

    The journalist chose to not even mention that a two months prison was wholly suspended on the condition that the boy receives the two cane strokes. Another internet news site NewsDzeZimbabwe just regurgitated the Radio VOP article.

    Aren’t we our own enemies? No wonder they have all these horrible perceptions about us internationally.

    What do you think? This is a human rights issue?

  • With Truscto agreement expired, Econet kills Ecolife

    EcolifeToday, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe announced in a public notice that as the Ecolife agreement with Trustco has expired, the mobile operator is unable to continue offering the mobile life insurance product. Econet says it will honor any claims from beneficiaries entitled to the cover as at midnight 17 February 2012.

    Here’s an extract from the public notice:

    All Econet Wireless (private) Limited customers who were subscribed to the Ecolife product are hereby notified that the agreement between Econet and its technical partners, Trusto Mobile (Pty) Limited and First mutual Life Assurance Company (Private) Limited has expired. Accordingly Econet is unable to continue to offer the Ecolife product.

    Ecolife was launched back in October 2010 and in just seven months Econet had managed to sign up some 1.6 million subscribers to the service. But the mobile operator had a fallout with its technical (Namibian Trustco Mobile) partner soon after with the two companies accusing each other of breach of contract. The two went to court and essentially, Econet lost. But it didn’t lose. It’s Trustco and the subscribers that did.

    Nothing from all this says Econet will not be launching its own life insurance product, the very thing Trustco sought an injunction against. Today’s notice may just be the first step in a carefully crafted strategy to replace Ecolife with an in-house developed product.

    Trustco Mobile is the mobile division of JSE listed Trustco Group Holdings.

  • Zimbabwe boy to be caned for Facebook mischief

    Zimbabwe boy to be caned for Facebook mischief

    We’re reading the Herald this morning that a 17-year old boy in Chiredzi (a town in south-east Zimbabwe) has been sentenced to two strokes of a cane by a local magistrate after being convicted of posting pictures of a local woman and describing her as a prostitute on Facebook.

    According to the story, the boy took a picture of the woman with his mobile phone and, determined to fix her, posted the picture to Facebook along with a description in the Shona vernacular that said “Mahure emuChiredzi ndiwaya”. Translated to English that says “These are the Chiredzi Prostitutes”. The woman apparently discovered the picture the same day and reported the matter to the local police and the boy was arrested.

    His crime according to the report is ‘criminal insult’.

    We don’t often read about arrests made and sentences passed locally over social media crimes except in a few cases where people have made political comments deemed inappropriate on Facebook. We imagine though there are numerous similar cases of defamation on social networks that go unreported. Interesting to see if more will follow.

  • biNu is shortlisted for a GSMA award

    biNuSeveral days ago, we asked on our Facebook Page if there were any fans that are still using biNu. Most of the responses we got show that people still do. Lots of them. Some even said they are actively selling biNu credits locally. We are learning this shouldn’t come as a surprise; The Australia –based Startup has made quite some impressive achievements since we last checked back in September 2011.

    Recently, we were in touch with Mark Shoebridge the guy in charge of business development at biNu. He says the service has grown phenomenally over the last year. “We achieved over 3 million monthly active users in January,” he told us, ”10 times where we were a year ago”.

    And they have been getting recognition for it. biNu has been shortlisted in the Most Innovative Mobile App category for the renowned GSMA Global Mobile Awards for 2012. They are shoulder to shoulder at the awards with the likes of Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Cisco, Square and other global brands.

    And that’s not all. This week, biNu announced a partnership with Worldreader to deliver digital books to biNu users in the developing world. The partnership with Worldreader allows biNu users to access a cloud-based library of digital books via a Worldreader App for biNu.

    “Worldreader improves the lives of millions of people in the developing world,” Gour Lentell, CEO for biNu is quoted in the release, “I am pleased we are able to extend their coverage and I hope biNu will play a part in their overall success.”

    Worldreader’s state mission is to make digital books available to all in the developing world, enabling millions of people to improve their lives.  The US-based organisation partners with publishers to bring millions of books to underserved children and families in the developing world with the help of local schools, teachers and the communities they work in. Other Worldreader partners include Amazon (makers of the Kindle), iHub in Kenya, USAID, Dropbox, Longhorn publishers and Penguin Young Readers Group.

    The Zimbabweans reading this (most of you) will love knowing that biNu was cofounded by a Zimbabwean, Gour Lentell, who now lives in Australia.

  • Facebook access without the web. Orange follows FMNA, Gemalto

    The one thing clear about telecoms in Africa is that basic phones still rule. There’s another thing too clear to ignore; it is that people on the continent love Facebook. Facebook is so popular, for many Africans it’s the first point of contact with the Internet. Orange has woken up to this fact. The mobile operator will be launching Facebook via USSD in Africa.

    With 70 million subscribers across 20 Africa countries, Facebook via USSD is a big deal. And there’s more reason; basic mobile phones, the so called dumbphones, rule. Facebook access without the web is a service with an extremely high chance of success in Africa.

    In the press release posted yesterday, Orange says it knows Facebook via USSD will succeed . According to the release the service was launched at the end of 2011 in Egypt, and over 350,000 subscribers connected Facebook via USSD in the first month.

    Using the service subscribers can search for Facebook friends, invite friends, accept or deny friend requests, update their status and comment/like/unlike their friend’s status’ all via USSD. Orange says subscribers will have the choice between four types of pricing: per session (10 to 20 minutes), daily, weekly and monthly. Exact bundles and tariffs will differ in each country.

    Orange is not the first with a Facebook solution for basic cellphones. In 2009, ForgetMeNot Africa, a London based startup, introduced an SMS based chat and email service with a launch on the Econet Lesotho network. The application, called Message Optimiser, allowed email communication using basic mobile phones. In the past 3 years, the service has extended to 5 more networks across Africa, amoung them Nigeria’s Glo and Econet Zimbabwe. According to FMNA, Facebook messages (chat and updates) now account for most of the Message Optimiser traffic in Zimbabwe.

    Gemalto (the Amseterdam-based guys powering NetOne’s mobile money system) also has a Facebook application for basic phones called Facebook for SIM that it released last year in February. The application, a SIM based one, provides text-menu-based interaction with Facebook via SMS. According to media reports last year the application was developed with the help of Facebook. The downside to the Gemalto solution is that being SIM based usually requires subscribers to replace their SIM cards with a high memory capacity one. This has proven to cause uptake problems here with NetOne’s OneWallet mobile money system.

    There’s no mention of who Orange’s external technical partner is on the Facebook via USSD project. It might mean it’s an internal solution but chances are they also worked with Facebook on this.

  • Project Brandify will build you a website for, wait for it… free

    Project Brandify will build you a website for, wait for it… free

    Just a few days ago a colleague here at Techzim wrote an article in which he discussed the changing web development landscape in Zimbabwe and the region. In the article he said how it’s not surprising these days to see developers advertising the development of a ‘complete’ website for as little as US $50. A new local web design company says $50 is too much, especially if you’re going to be paying for domain registration, hosting and other little things that come with having a website. They’re proposing a figure way lower than that.

    Free.

    Yes, the company will build websites for free. To say a company is actually a bit misleading; it’s a consortium of 3 companies; a web development company (Kreative Republic), a design company (Aftershock Interactive) and a hosting company (Cloudceed). The consortium is called Project Brandify.

    In a press release which the consortium representative Tirivashe Mundondo sent us, Project Brandify says their main objective is to put Zimbabwean businesses online. Sounds familiar? It’s somewhat similar to what Google is trying to do in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and other African countries. Brandify is not waiting for Google to come and eat their lunch.

    But nothing under the sun is completely free. The free Brandify websites come with one condition; that you host the website with them. The hosting, which Mundodo says offers unlimited space, bandwidth, emails, databases and other bells, costs $9.95, which is somewhere around standard outside Zimbabwe. So yes, this means the websites will be hosted outside Zim. Customers will also be required to pay $15 once for domain registration.

    Mundondo explained that the websites are not just free Joomla themes ganked off the web but real custom designs for each client. Brandify will use popular content management systems, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Mundondo said they are promising customers a turnaround time of 3 days after the customer has submitted the website content to the Brandify team.

    A huge tasks but it’s all worth it, explained Mundondo: “Most businesses are not online especially SME’s and such lack of local content will only deprive us the opportunity to offer online services and products that will revolutionarise the way Zimbabwe conducts business.”

    How they will achieve this, we have no idea. We too are curious to see the first 10 or so websites they do. Is it possible to deliver a high quality custom design in 3 days?

    The determination to do just this seems there; At least Mundodo is confident they will deliver, and he says they are not taking the task before them lightly; “Until June, we will be working 18hrs/day, 7 days a week” he says.

    He goes on to share that they are also looking at the long term. There are other benefits to doing this for all entrepreneurs and consultants working to earn a living off the internet in Zimbabwe. One of the chief benefits here is that “if every Zimbabwean business was online, there would be more jobs for the tech industry” explained Mundondo.

    What do you think? Will Project Brandify be able to sustain this?

  • The Herald website hacked, used to propagate pornography

    The Herald website hacked, used to propagate pornography

    We received several tips this morning from readers alerting us that the Herald website, www.herald.co.zw, had been compromised. We checked. It was. The hack was silent with links to pornography sites inconspicuously placed on every page on the site. Both the Herald and the company that developed & host the website, Webdev, were alerted and the issue has since been resolved.

    The porn links were placed close to the bottom of each page on the site and you could only see them by checking the source of the site, or carefully hovering the mouse around the white space at the end of the body of each page. Like this:

    Herald Hack

    Here’s a screenshot of the source:

    We’re guessing the hack is for SEO purposes and nothing malicious targeted against the Herald itself. We will try to get an official comment from the Herald on what caused the issue.

    The Herald is Zimbabwe’s biggest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Zimbabwe’s largest newspaper publisher, Zimpapers. Zimpapers also publishes The Chronicle, The Sunday Mail, The Sunday News amoung other titles.

  • MATHs startup, Gikko, launches mobile content services with Telecel

    We just received a press release from Gikko, the till roll ads and bulk sms startup that we last wrote about in September last year. The release announces the launch of local mobile content services on the Telecel Zimbabwe network.

    Basically the new service will allow users to request and receive content such as flirt texts, bible verses and inspirational sms messages by sending a keyword via sms to a Telecel shortcode. Each piece of content requested and delivered will cost the user US 10 cents.

    Gikko says in the release that the service will be upgraded later in the year to allow users to subscribe once and receive content for a week. Also on the cards is a trivia quiz game based around the English football season, which will allow participants to accumulate points and be rewarded for them at the end of the season. That’s however going to come much later in the year, in October.

    The mobile VAS side of Gikko so far has been bulk sms and stuff like powering the sms (ordinary sms) side of promotions like the Gloria Valentine’s promotion last week. This new service on the Telecel network therefore represents Gikko’s first commercial foray into real shortcodeVAS stuff.

    We hope Gikko extends the service to the Econet network in the coming months so they don’t leave out the 5.6 million Econet subscribers. Econet currently has 63% of the Zimbabwe mobile telecoms market. On Econet, Gikko would join Itllusion and G-Telecoms (the G-Tide VAS subsidiary), startups that have managed to provide value added services on the network.

    We are happy that the new Gikko service only charges 10 cents per piece of content. There’s definitely some sense put into pricing the content. One of the major problems we noted when we wrote about the Itllusion VAS last year was that the startup was charging between 29 cents and 49 cents per sms (Their website indicates they still do).

    We applaud Gikko for the pricing and hope they can justify enough sms volume to get even lower. As crazy low as eTXT sms chat messages now are.

    As indicated when we first wrote about the startup back in July last year, Gikko is a Matamba Anonaka Technology Holdings (this tech VC firm) startup. Today’s press release further reveals that Gikko is now the operating brand for Starfish Zimbabwe. Starfish Zimbabwe is a joint venture between Matamba Anonaka and Starfish Mobile International. Starfish Mobile International does mobile VAS in over 16 countries across the African continent and the Middle East.

    You can download the full press release here.

  • Econet’s Valentine’s promo: A $100 Android smartphone

    Econet’s Valentine’s promo: A $100 Android smartphone

    Huawei U8100This is the lowest an Android smartphone has been sold yet in Zimbabwe. For Valentine’s month, Econet has slashed the price of the Huawei U8100 smartphone by 50% to just US $100. The U8100 is Android powered and one of Huawei’s entry level smartphones. If you read the Huawei Ideos review we did last, you have an idea what kind of phone we’re taking about. They are close cousins.

    The U8100 is a little heavier and bigger and in terms of dimensions, but ultimately has the same screen size with the Ideos, a 240×320 pixel screen with 256K colors. The Android version on this one is Éclair (v2.1) but honestly, how many of us even care. As longs as it’s got the trendy Android tag right? The Ideos is version 2.2 (Froyo).  The one thing you may miss as a result of this is push email notifications.

    For internet connectivity you get both 3G and Wi-Fi. Bluetooth and MicroUSB are also available on this phone. GPS comes standard too. Processors power is also same as the Ideos, 528MHz. The camera is 3.1 megapixels which will give you some decent photos.

    Generally, this is a good price for an Android smartphone. You might want to get it for your first entry level smartphone but don’t expect a wowing smartphone experience. You’re not getting an iPhone here.

    Econet usually doesn’t revert to the old high price after promotions so the price may stay the same after February, but don’t count too much on it. If you have $100 to spare and this sounds like something you would like, go get it. If you have an additional $65, the Ideos is even better.

  • Two H-Metro Facebook Pages. The more popular one is fake.

    Two H-Metro Facebook Pages. The more popular one is fake.

    HMetro FacebookZimbabwe’s popular H-Metro tabloid newspaper H-Metro has two Facebook Pages. The bad news (for H-Metro) is that the most popular one, and the most recently updated one at that, is the fake one. The fake H-Metro Facebook Page has 11,379 likes, while the real one has just 3,854 likes.

    HMetro posted an update on its website recently alerting users an imposter page was pretending to be the real H-Metro:

    To all our readers and Facebook fans, please be advised that there is a FAKE H-Metro Facebook Page doing rounds on the internet imitating the REAL H-Metro page.

    Please be advised that we do not have individuals administering another page on our behalf neither do we have an input on it.
    This FAKE page does not carry the views and/or opinions of H-Metro.
    Please, be warned that if people’s rights are violated in anyway H-Metro will not be held accountable.
    To visit the official Facebook Page login into www.facebook.com/HMetrozim

    Here’s the fake one facebook.com/pages/H-Metro-Real-Life-Real-Drama/259352957428224

    The most likely situation here is that the official H-Metro came to the party a little late. They have bureaucratic old media red tape to deal with before they take any radical steps like having some social media presence. And when consensus was finally reached at Zimpapers, someone had already seized the opportunity to use the controversial crowd pulling brand. And use it they did!

    It’s possible for HMetro to have the fake one pulled down if they contact Facebook of course but they shouldn’t expect the process to be easy. An easier route would be trying to convince the administrators of the fake page to hand it over. Or better still, they could outsource the social media side of the tabloid to them; these imposters clearly have a better understanding of social media. Maybe the those Twitter and YouTube icons on the H-Metro website could become more than just place holders.

    That aside, the HMetro website has to be one of the most unstable websites out there. It’s down so often we almost don’t see the need to check when someone complains about it being down. Take this weekend for example, the website was down the whole weekend with the now usual “This site has been suspended” message. The site was restored this morning.

    The HMetro website itself recently went through a design makeover.

  • Econet’s new concept cyber cafe (pictures)

    Econet’s new concept cyber cafe (pictures)

    Last week, launched it’s much awaited concept Cyber Cafe in Harare (Montagu centre). We had an opportunity to go there and take a few photos of the place. We won’t say that we loved it! You just need to see the pictures below. We also hope you’ll get a chance to visit it if you happen to be in Harare.

    It’s the second such Cyber Cafe by Econet in Zimbabwe. The first was open in Victoria Falls last year. Initially we were worried that Econet is getting into the Internet cafe business and will be opening several of these around. They’re not. At least the Econet staff we spoke to about it say so. According to them, the cyber cafe is just meant to showcase a world class cafe experience and also provide a means for Econet to sell its mobile devices and assist customers having problems configuring their mobile phones for mobile broadband. And other such problems.

    Anyway, here are the pictures we took. More on our Facebook page shortly.

  • Are your children safe on the internet? What should you do?

    Are your children safe on the internet? What should you do?

    family safetyOne of the issues that’s not brought up as often as it should, as Zimbabwe and similar countries are starting to get online at a more accelerated pace, is the issue of the protection of minors. We are all somehow consumed in the liberation of information that the internet brings and seem to want to ignore its obvious double-edged-sword nature.

    The internet, without any deliberate action to keep children safe, is literally a minefield. The Internet is powerful because of the deep level to which it can satisfy a curious and adventurous mind. But it’s also dangerous to minors for the very same reason.

    I frequently observe parents that are oblivious to this fact and offer their children unrestricted access to the internet. Without the knowledge of the parents, kids have access to everything from pornography, extremely violent material, to the strangest cult material you can imagine. There’s also the issue of questionable characters they befriend on social networks like Facebook and some they chat to on IM networks like Google Talk, MXit and WhatsApp.

    It’s not it’s easy to monitor, let alone control the activity of minors on the internet. Not easy especially because kids usually know much more about the latest technologies that power the internet than parents do. Aren’t they the so-called digital natives? The parents, the digital migrants, are just learning, and like the proverbial old dogs, don’t have the curiosity and hunger to explore new stuff and know the internet for what it is.

    It’s not easy but being aware helps. Being aware of what the internet is for starters. Then being aware of the tools available to keep the family safe.

    Once in a while I bump into such helpful information. This week was one such good week. On Tuesday, on the Google homepage, instead of the usual product promotional links under the Google search field and buttons, Google put a link to its ‘Family Safety Center’ page. In the “Tips from parents at Google” section is a video I found quite informing. It’s by Vic Gundotra, the Senior Vice-President of Social Business at Google. Part of what he says in there, close to the end, is this:

    It’s incredibly important for parents to stay involved. It’s a mistake to allow children to have unlimited, unmonitored access. Certainly, you wouldn’t leave your child alone in the middle of the city, and you should never do that on the internet.

    Here’s the video:

  • Techzim Interviews: ZOL CEO David Behr on acquisition by Liquid

    Techzim Interviews: ZOL CEO David Behr on acquisition by Liquid

    We had the opportunity to speak to ZOL CEO, David Behr on his company’s recent acquisition by the Liquid Telecommunications Group. In the interview he talks about why they sold to Liquid, what this means for ZOL going forward in terms of independence of the ISP and service delivery to customers. Below is a transcript of the interview.

    ZOL CEO David BehrSo what exactly has taken place?

    Liquid Telecom Group has acquired ZOL. So we’re now part of the group. We have announced it to staff and we’ll be doing an email to customers in a day or so and we’re telling you now.

    For how much?

    That information is still private at the moment.

    So, wholly owned by Liquid now?

    Yes.

    And you [David] going forward?

    Going forward I will stay the CEO of ZOL and I will start to do more on the Liquid side to help develop their products and network.

    For how long?

    We have not defined a set time. I’m very excited about my job. I’ve loved doing this for the past 15 odd years and I’ve just got even more excited. So there’s no fixed time. I’m really looking forward to it. If I absolutely hate it I guess I won’t do it for too long and if I absolutely love it I guess I’ll do it for a long time. I don’t feel I’m being forced to do anything. I really want to stay on. I really want to help ZOL grow. I really want to help Liquid grow. And I want to see the two integrating as well as they can and just become better.

    On the customer side what does this mean?

    I think for the customers it’s really good news. One thing ZOL has done in the past is we have made a very good name for ourselves. I think we’ve focused on a lot of customer support. We haven’t been perfect as you know; we obviously had some challenges in the environment but we’ve always tried to put the customer first and we’ve always tried to give them as best an experience as we can. I think now with much bigger group behind us we have much more resources and we have much more control of the network itself.

    One of the things we have always complained about to customers in the past is that we haven’t owned the last mile and we haven’t controlled the last mile. So we have had absolutely no way to ensure that it’s got good quality of service.  And I think the deal with liquid allows us to now have a much closer relationship with the people physically controlling the last mile.

    So for the customers it’s going to mean we have much more access to the whole chain from the customers desktop all the way to the internet overseas. The whole chain is now part of this group and therefore we can give end to end guarantees.

    But is there anything immediate, anything the customer will experience immediately?

    These changes will take a short time to come to fruition.  So it is not an overnight process. I think it will take time for it all to start to make a difference. I don’t think anyone can wake up tomorrow and find ZOL is a million times better because of this. It will take time to integrate. It’s going to take time to deploy the new systems. I hope over the next 6 months you will feel quite a difference.  We will be launching some exciting new services.

    So a customer is used to having a personal service, if they’re not happy with a certain service they are able to call a senior guy at ZOL and have it resolved? As part of a larger group, that will still be possible?

    It will. One thing we’ve agreed to do is to keep ZOL very independent and very separate. We’re going to continue with the ZOL brand which is very strong. And we’re going to have the same relationships we have with our customers today carrying on. The customers are still going to be dealing with the same people. They are going to have the same management team. We’re going to have the same support team. So nothing gets worse for the customer.

    It’s just that now, if there’s something we need to escalate we have much more visibility into the liquid network where things could be going wrong. We have much more power to get things fixed quickly. And even for staff, change is not going to come pretty swiftly; customers will still be dealing with the same people.

    But there’s going to be some change, some staff coming from Liquid

    We’re bound to look for areas where we can improve efficiencies. We will do a full skills and capabilities audit, and thereafter decide where people fit best. We’re going to be careful though to make sure customers that have been dealing with Liquid carry on and those that have been dealing with ZOL carry on. We’ll make sure we bring out the best of both companies and not create a muddled mediocrity, where it just becomes the lowest common denominator. We’re going to be very careful to make sure that the customer experience just gets better.

    We’re both very fast growing companies. We’ve been growing independent of each other and we’ll keep growing. So it’s not like we’re bringing together two entities that are shrinking in some way.

    Will these brands merge at some point?

    It’s very hard to see in the longterm future. But for the foreseeable future there’s going to be no merging of those brands. We both have our strengths, I think ZOL has a pretty good brand and name in the retail space and Liquid has a good brand and name in the wholesale and corporate space.

    Up to now the Liquid brand hasn’t been strongly advertised or talked about, I imagine that’s going to change. But I think we serve very different segments of the market. We have survived the past couple of years together without trampling on each other’s territories and I don’t see why it’s going to change now.

    So Liquid is part of the Econet family and Econet is already doing stuff on both corporate side and consumer internet. How will that work? You’re competing against each other in the same family?

    I don’t know how that is going to work because I’m not particularly familiar with the structures that are in place now. I haven’t focused much in the past on what Econet has been delivering. I think Econet is very focused, from what I can see, on GSM, on mobile data. And we’ve been much more focused on broadband by fixed access. We both resell WiMAX products and that can only lead to more choice for the consumer and a great example of how there is healthy competition.  The market segments we target are quite different; it’s not as much mass market as Econet has been going for. We’ve gone for a much higher end prosumer if you like. We all got our market segments that don’t overly clash with each other.  Whilst there is clearly some cross-shareholding, liquid is a very separate and regional entity.

    But as we go forward this year, there’s going to be a lot of blurring of that line? The user that’s used to getting good internet at the office is now starting to get good internet at home as well.

    I think the line in telecoms is getting blurred in general not just between the user at the office and the user at home. As data starts to be pervasive you start getting services like for example Voice over IP. That’s going to get more blurred with TDM over GSM networks. So there’s a lot of blurring that’s going to be going on but I think that the market is big enough to have the different segments targeted by different types of companies.

    And for the big question; Why?

    I think that ZOL has done very well for the last 15 years. For me personally, I’ve run ZOL the 15 years and it’s been a great experience. I’ve enjoyed growing the business from literally one computer and two modems. But I personally felt that it’s time for me to get on to doing something a bit bigger. From a company perspective I wanted to make sure that ZOL had a very sound footing going forward. I think the competition in the country is getting extremely severe.

    I was actually thinking last night about it, telecoms is pretty the most competitive industry in Zimbabwe today. I can’t think of a more competitive industry. So there’s a lot of fragmentation at the moment and consolidation is quite inevitable. You’ve already seen consolidation happen when last year iWayAfrica (Telkom) bought out Mweb Zimbabwe and Africa Online. There are so many players in the telecoms space at the moment its inevitable there’s going to be consolidation driven by market forces because there is so much competition out there.

    So one of the reasons to do this was to become part of a bigger group that would give us a much more solid footing going forward. And reduce the risk in customers choosing a company like ZOL. I think being independent, I think being small relative to what telecoms is, there was always a bit of a danger that customers would fear being with a smaller ISP. Although we would commit to giving a good service there was some degree of questioning over viability. We have always been successful up to now, but going forward there was always the possibility that we get squeezed because of the heavy competition in the environment. By doing this deal it ensured ZOL’s viability and gives us access to far larger resources.

    In terms strategic alliances you had with other ISPs and IAPs, YoAfrica, Aquiva, Aptics. What happens to those?

    Well we have to see going forward what’s going to happen to that. I don’t think a lot will happen. We will continue with our important strategic alliances. As you know, we did have an alliance with YoAfrica in terms of investment into these WiMax networks.

    ZOL as an independent company has a choice where it’s going to buy services from. We are always going to buy services where we think we’re getting the best deal both in terms of price and in terms of quality of service. So there’s no reason for us to go and jump ship or be forced to buy from any particular vendor if we’re not going to give customers the best deal at the end of the day. So the most important thing is to keep our eye on the customer and make sure the customer is getting the best service and the best price. And I can’t believe that we would ever go a situation of doing something that would hurt that.

    So I hope that our existing strategic alliances can continue and will flourish, and we will certainly work with them to make sure they are comfortable with it going forward. Obviously it takes two people, but from our side I hope that we continue to always be able to get the best service to the customer.

    And your general comment in terms of uptake of internet services in Zimbabwe. Do you see any major things to happen in 2012

    I think in 2012 were going to see a lot more uptake on another segment of the market because I think up to now internet has been quite expensive. I think it’s been very clear over the last year how much internet pricing has dropped. And obviously as you drop prices you make internet available to a much broader spectrum of customers. So I think you’ll see the market grow quite dramatically because of that.

    We’re continuing to get as much fibre as we can to customers because we really believe that long term, the only way to deliver services is over fibre. Because once you put in that fibre, once you’ve invested in that fibre, you can deliver not just data services but all kinds of services over it. And of course it’s infinitely expandable.

    This is fibre to the home?

    Yes, we’d like to do fibre to the home. At the moment we’re doing fibre to businesses. We’re doing fibre to neighborhoods and ultimately fibre to the home is the end goal.

    And you don’t think Wireless is there yet?

    Wireless is always going to be about capacity because there are simple laws of physics that only allow a certain number of megabits to go over the megahertz. Of course wireless is getting improved over time but in terms of legacy network I don’t see wireless being able to deliver the high capacity bandwidth to the home. I think wireless will always have a good place especially mobility. But when we start talking 20 plus megabits speeds into each home, I don’t believe wireless can deliver that.

    Do you think Zimbabwe is there yet in terms of needing 10, 20 megabits to the home?

    I think everywhere in the world where you have delivered those kind of speeds, you find the consumers finding a way to make use of them.

    Like?

    Like YouTube, download of movies, rental of movies, video conferencing, a bunch of services that we can’t even envisage today that will come. I think that every increase in speed has always ended up being consumed by consumers. I don’t think we need to worry too much about what they will be doing with it because they will figure out ways or companies will figure out ways to deliver that to them.

  • Zimbabwe finance ministry website taken down after hacking

    Zimbabwe finance ministry website taken down after hacking

    According to Consumerizim, a local consumer e-activism website, the Zimbabwe ministry of finance website www.zimtreasury.org was hacked yesterday. The website was apparently hacked by a group of hackers calling themselves Abs0lution. The site has since been taken down.

    Here’s a screenshot Consumerizim took of the defaced website:

    The site has been taken down and currently shows the following:

    Finance Ministry Zimbabwe

    The finance ministry website (like all other government websites) is only used to publish (already public) reports and make announcements. It doesn’t have any actual connection to any of the ministry’s databases or data that’s not already public, so, save for embarrassment, such hacking has no impact on the ministry’s operations.

    This is the second time the Finance ministry’s website has been hacked. As diplomatic cables from Wikileaks dominated the news in December 2010, a hackers group reportedly working in solidarity with Wikileaks defaced the website resulting in it being taken down for several weeks.

    This is also the second high profile hacking of a government’s website in Africa this year. Just last month, more than 100 Kenyan government websites were hacked by an Indonesian hacker.

  • Estimating the number of Facebook users in Zimbabwe

    Estimating the number of Facebook users in Zimbabwe

    There has been a lot of curiosity about Zimbabwe’s Facebook population lately. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t provide Zimbabwe’s Facebook stats because of, well, you guessed it, we’re a bad people. Or at least the targeted US sanctions say some leaders here are.

    We’ve been curious too and have written to Facebook a couple of times. No response. We’ve also written to Socialbakers, the company known for Facebook stats but they too don’t have anything. Their final answer after some exchanges (some not so good) was:

    I discussed this situation with our development department. The reason why Zimbabwe is not in our statistics is that Facebook API does not pull data for it. (As I mentioned in previous email). This “issue” is the main reason that caused this situation and unfortunately we are not in a position to influence it. We can only reach data that is pulled out of Facebook API.

    I hope you understand this complicated situation and we apologize for inconveniences caused.

    We’ve even tried getting mad about it. Didn’t help. Creating our own social networks definitely will, but before we all move over to Sha, Facebook is a reality we have to deal with. Zimbos love it!

    So anyway, the curiosity increased after we posted the Google Plus stats two days ago. Now instead of waiting for Zuckerberg to un-target Zim, or wait for some of our politicians to become more likeable people to the US, we thought we would just take figures from other African countries, average them and use the data to estimate to Zimbabwe’s stats. Rough estimate at best. Why not?

    We used data from the top 10 list of African countries with the most internet penetration in Africa. Zimbabwe is number 10 on that list. The others are Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Algeria, Sudan, Kenya, Tunisia and Uganda. Of the 9, Sudan is apparently also has US issues so, effectively we were left with 8 countries, the following:

    Average Facebook Users as Percentage of Internet Users (Africa's Top 10)As you can see the average number Facebook users as a percentage of internet users in the 8 countries is 42%.

    The percentage of Internet users that are on Facebook for each country was a bit unpredictable. Facebook is clearly not as popular everywhere as we thought. It’s clearly not very popular in Nigeria and Uganda where Facebook users are only 10% and 11% of the total number of internet users respectively. Compare that with Kenya’s 33% or South Africa’s 71%

    Anyway, we conservatively (very) estimate the number of internet users in Zimbabwe to be 2.5 million. So: Econet says it has at least 2.1 million internet users and that’s 37% of its subscribers (well, SIM cards) using the internet. Now if we assume that both NetOne and Telecel have at least 20% of their subscribers (1.86m and 1.46m respectively) on mobile broadband, that’s an additional 600,000 people on the internet in Zimbabwe. And because we need to be as conservative as possible, let’s just assume that subscribers using fixed and mobile (WiMax) internet from the 14 internet access providers also have internet from either of the 3 mobile providers above. Let’s not count them and leave our total number of users at 2.7 million. But there’s the multiple SIM card issue as well. Let’s knock off 200,000 from our total to take care of the overlaps and remain with just 2.5m.

    Now let’s apply our 42% Africa average to that figure. That give us some 1.06 million Zimbabweans on Facebook.

    I’d say there’s definitely more, but I’d have no data to back this except that I know Zimbos love Facebook.

    image via au.ibtimes.com

  • Kubatana maps Typhoid affected areas from crowd sourced info

    Today, we stumbled upon a tweet by Kubatana.net announcing a map of Typhoid affected areas in Zimbabwe that the organisation has created from data crowd sourced via SMS. As you probably know Zimbabwe is currently battling a Typhoid epidemic. Currently over 1,000 cases have been reported.

    Kubatana basically sent an SMS to their subscribers asking them how typhoid has affected their communities, and what they think government should do. They took the SMS messages whose location they could get, about a quarter of the 200 responses received, and used them to create the map.


    View Larger Map

    According to Kubatana’s Amanda Atwood, they used Clickatell for outgoing SMS messages  and FrontlineSMS for the incoming. She says it works out more efficient for them and that it’s cost effective than using FrontlineSMS for both. They used free online mapping software ArcGIS Online for the actual map.

    The epidemic is not over and one hopes more data is added to the map to make more information easily available directly from ordinary people on the ground. Atwood says people can still text the Kubatana SMS number 0772452201 to add their voice to the map. Remember to include your location in the SMS when you do.

  • Africom abandons afri-com.com domain to be used for adult content

    Africom abandons afri-com.com domain to be used for adult content

    Yesterday, we received a tip via Twitter that the Africom website (www.afri-com.com) had been compromised and that the website was showing some adult content. We alerted some friends at Africom and went on to check around for more information. The ‘compromised’ website is showing the following:

    (we’ve blurred out the not-safe-for-work stuff, which you can see by scrolling down the afri-com.com page and highlighting the text)

    Checking around, trying to figure this out, we remembered; the website is not compromised at all. The web address just doesn’t belong to Africom anymore.

    See, a little over a week ago, 27 January 2012 to be exact, Africom switched domains. The company sent an SMS to all its subscribers advising them that its new web address is www.afri-com.net and that all staff email addresses have also changed from something like ‘tendai@afri-com.com’ to ‘tendai@afri-com.net’. So we checked the new web address and sure enough it has the Africom website we all know.

    If you’re finding this change (especially with the adult content taking over the old domain) strange, you’re not alone. We were shocked. How does an internet company serious about its internet brand drop a domain just like that and leave it to be used for porn adverts?

    The one answer we keep getting to, the one thing that makes sense, is that Africom didn’t have a choice. They wanted to but could not keep the domain they used for more than 10 years. If they could, they’d have it redirect to their new web address at least.

    The registration records for afri-com.com domain show they were last updated on the 27th of January 2012. The same day, Africom switched domains.

    The registration records for the afri-com.net domain show they were last updated on the 27th of January 2012. The same day, Africom switched domains.

    It’s not clear to us why Africom let the .com domain go. Did someone just decide it was time to move to a .net. Did someone there forget to renew? Or, did they discover they didn’t own it? We’re trying to find out and will update this story once we get a response.

    Whatever the reason, much of Zimbabwe doesn’t know Africom has changed web addresses. The internet’s directory, Google, doesn’t know yet; Googling Africom Zimbabwe still returns results for the old address. Africom itself has made little effort to notify Zimbabwe of the change. The SMS is not enough in these circumstances. They need press statements to make it clear to the market the company has nothing to do with that domain anymore.

    Now the really strange thing is that someone at Africom felt it better to switch to .net domain and not just the simpler and expected www.africom.co.zw. The company already owns the .co.zw domain and it already points to their website but for some reason they don’t use it much in their marketing material and choose not to use it for staff email addresses. Why?

    Africom is one of the biggest internet providers in Zimbabwe. The company is credited with making mobile broadband (based on CDMA2000 EVDO) available at an affordable price in some cities in Zimbabwe and triggering the drop in prices by competing internet providers in the country. Africom is one of the few providers that have direct international fibre connectivity and the company also has a VSAT teleport hub in Harare.

  • The ‘dollar for 2’ Telecel SIM cards

    The ‘dollar for 2’ Telecel SIM cards

    A reader, Tatenda Dzumira, sent us photos recently of Telecel Zimbabwe agents busy on the streets of Bulawayo touting from a loud speaker the availability of “dollar for 2” Telecel SIM cards. The SIM cards are sold from the back of a pickup truck and new subscribers can buy and register for mobile services right there in the streets. “…in Bulawayo they are evrywhere” noted Dzimura, referring to the agents.

    Here are the photos:

    Telecel Dollar for 2

    In a bid to catch up with Econet, Telecel is literally flooding the market with SIM cards.

    We asked Telecel Zim PR executive, Francis Chimanda, about this method of selling and he said that the people selling the ‘lines’ on the streets are agents and vendors who run their own businesses and have taken the initiative to promote Telecel lines based on the low price they’re getting from Telecel. He says their registered dealer price for lines is US 25 cents each and the cash price for ordinary customers is 50 cents at Telecel shops.

    The “Dollar for 2” selling style became popular in Zimbabwe after the dollarization of the economy in 2009. Dollar for 2 items, which can be clothes, DVDs, shoes, or some other cheap Chinese import, are mostly found in downtown shops and flea markets in Zimbabwe’s cities.

    images credit: Tatenda Dzumbira

  • A “How not to launch an internet based product” lesson from Econet

    Last week, after we attended the Econet VoIP launch we discovered that the product’s web platform, voip.econet.co.zw, was basically not ready for public viewing. This despite the fact that they told us about the web platform and made the website address very clear for everyone to see at the launch event. But still, we thought maybe it had probably been a crazy day for the web team at Econet and they’d get around to fixing it over night or the next day. So we let it slide.

    It’s been a whole week and the site is still not fixed! Links still don’t work, and if you check out the pages they are hiding from users (by making links not work), you see the pages still contain default SysMaster (their supplier) information. Below is an article this writer posted on a personal blog about the issue. We’re publishing it here in the hope that someone at Econet will get the website fixed.

    During his presentation of the new service, the econet commercial director George Barbaressos, wouldn’t disclose the tariffs of the new services. Close to the end of the presentation however, I saw a slide that had the web address of the web platform of the the service and took a photo of it:

    As any guy would do I checked the website for any information we were not getting from the presenter, and sure enough the tariffs were on the website. I tweeted the web address to the Techzim followers so they too could find more details about the new service.

    On checking the website again when I was writing the story, I noticed someone had taken down the tariffs and in place of the information put up the following image:

    By this time I had already seen tweets that the website was quite broken so I accepted that this wasn’t ready for viewing yet and the guys were fixing stuff. Advised readers the same.

    Still wanting to hunt for more information I clicked around the site. Most of the links were not working but eventually I clicked on Contact Us and it opened a page that, instead of providing Econet details, provided some “about us” and contact details of a company called SysMaster Corporation:

    Googled the company and saw that it offers VoIP Billing, Gateways and other stuff. Kinda made sense then that Econet bought the VoIP system from SysMaster and they forgot to change this. The forgetting doesn’t make sense, it’s the “why SysMaster” that does.

    This also explains other pages like the Econet VoIP “Terms of service” page which has information about a different company now called Norfa:

    Eventually found that Norfa is actually one of SysMaster’s VoIP systems and the specific one Econet got, I presume. SysMaster, it seems, created a dummy company to demonstrate Norfa to its clients. The dummy norfa actually has a website:

    So what’s the point? 

    The point is that Econet VoIP launched today in the morning and they made the web address very visible during the presentation of the new product even though they knew the platform wasn’t ready yet.

    The point is that if the web admin guy/girl at Econet was able to take down the tariffs quickly when we disclosed the web address on Twitter, how is he/she failing to just go in there and remove the default pages that come with the system?

    The main point here is: how under the sun do you launch a product, one of whose main points of interface with customers is the web, without having the web platform ready? Doesn’t make any sense.

  • Africom finally kills off the loss leading $18 bundle

    In October 2010, Africom made a bold unprecedented move in the history of the internet in Zimbabwe. Fresh from the launch of its new red brand and mobile broadband services, the company announced the pricing of its data packages; the cost of a 1 gigabyte bundle was US $18. It was crazy. It was fantastic for the customers. We celebrated. For the first time in Zimbabwe, here was a company that understood that the internet was not a luxury for rich.

    To put this in context, the competition, Econet at the time, was charging $98 for a 1 gigabyte bundle. We commended Africom for the move. The rich ISPs, the ZOLs and YOs and iWays didn’t like it a single bit, and they whined about it. The competition basically said it was unsustainable and that the model would crash soon. It didn’t. For one year at least it didn’t. And we all happily browsed the net.

    But the boardroom squabbles started.  And when they did, the writing was on the wall; the $18 Gig would go soon enough. Despite claims by Africom staff that the company could sustain it, we all knew it was a loss leader and it needed to drive adoption of the service fast so the company could make revenue from the 11 cents per megabyte out-of-bundle service.

    It didn’t.  And it was mostly Africom’s fault; they let people buy multiple first bundles so there was really never any need for a customer to use the out-of-bundle service.

    So, yes. It did crash.

    Africom announced last night they are upping the price from $18 to $25 for the first gigabyte, a package they call MiChoice. To compensate for this they’ll reduce the out-of-bundle price from 11 cents per megabyte to 5 cents. In the following SMS they sent out to subscribers, they made it sound like this means lower prices for customers. It does not. And doesn’t need to; Africom needs to make money.

    Africom has slashed the price of the commercial data rate from $0.11c per megabyte to $0.05c. This low rate can be accessed when the first contractual data bundle (1 Gig or any as per your contract) has been exhausted. To enhance your value, please note also that the price for MiChoice 1 Gig will now change from $18 to $25 including VAT. These changes are with effect from 6 February 2012.

    For very low usage customers this is still an ok deal. It’s still the lowest priced first gigabyte on the market. But for 2 gigabytes-going-up usage customers, choosing Africom is not the no-brainer it used to be. Brodacom, YoAfrica, Aptics and ZOL all offer ‘unlimited’ one user mobile broadband packages in the range of $50 a month. 5 cents per MB is also in the same range mobile operators Telecel and NetOne are selling some of their packages.

    As other operators slash prices, Africom is upping them.