Today, Africom sent a message to its customers through SMS announcing that the Africom CDMA network is now officially interconnected with the Econet mobile network and the TelOne fixed line network. This in addition to the existing Telecel interconnection. Africom also took the opportunity to remind the market that making calls to other networks costs only US 12 cents, less than half of what the incumbent GSM operators currently charge.
Africom launched mobile voice telephony back in June this year, and then only had commercial interconnection with Telecel. In July, test interconnection was made with Econet and it was opened up to all Africom clients but it wasn’t official yet, meaning they could turn it off and on as they finalised the agreements.
Africom still doesn’t have interconnection with NetOne, the second largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers. They obviously need it to provide the ‘full’ voice service. As it is, any subscriber cannot make a complete migration to Africom for voice as they will still need their old provider for calls to NetOne subscribers.
Still, Africom is the one new player that has made significant progress in as far as interconnection with the telecoms incumbents is concerned. We applaud them for that. The other new players, the IAPs, include Spiritage, Aptics, Aquiva Wireless, Telecontract and Blue Sat (Gigatel). Except Spiritage, all the new providers have not interconnected with the incumbents. Spiritage itself has only interconnected with Econet.
Share
Home
20 comments
Soul where can one get these Africom lines? And is their network offering mobile data? Are their packages prepaid?
hi if i buy a cdma cellphone can i use it on the africom network.
I wonder if Africom provides VoIP lines… Hmn….
it is voip
oh gr8. Then this means it will integrate easily with asterisk right?
It has VoIP but this CDMA mobile network is Circuit Switched
Circuit Switched really? l would like to think any newly launched company would go for packet switched in the hope of easier future expansion.
ls there any reason why Africom chose Circuit Switched?
The 4G mobile standard ,LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a whole IP based network. I dont know why they didnt opt for it.
Somebody was either sold a dummy, more like a supplier who have overstocked his warehouse only to find a cheap and naive Africom ready to be hooked.
Why start with a tech which was discovered centuries ago – 1858, when you can start on the latest platform to match current demands and future growth?
l bet this is going to be very expensive and futile for Africom, no wonder there network is soooooooo slow nowadays!
@ ic0n1c you can go through to any Africom shop either one by tendeseka office park or by stanley house along Jason Moyo opposite ba
rbours. and yes Africom’s network offers mobile data as well its a converged service. @ Tendai yes if you have a CDMA cellphone you can use it on the africom network
man bought the line today done like 15 mins on about 60cents sweet thanks africom
If i bring my own cdma phone,can they assign a number and can i still jump to another cdma network,say Spiritage??
Spiritage uses WCDMA. Africom uses CDMA. With africom you can switch to Powertel and telone CDMA network. there are now 3 operators with CDMA hence its not a challenge of handsets since these operators will launch soon.
Yu have to be carefull when yu use the term CDMA, coz even Econet uses CDMA.
Rather be specific e.g
Africom & Powertel CDMA2000
Spiritage UMTS TD-SCDM
Econet & Telecel UMTS-WCDMA
etc
Spiritage is using TD-SCDMA not WCDMA, so jumping frm one Network to onother its going to be hell coz we now have 3 different technologies being used the country.