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.
8 comments
I could have sworn not to long ago there are a piece on this site about Econet terminating that product. Dejavu! Has Econet really exhausted what it could possibly offer in telecommunications now that they are the official telco monopoly in Zim. Or they simply don’t have people with creative brains to come up with products in keeping with the industry they are in. My recommendation is; start with network infrastructure first. The country deperately needs a network with whoosh speed. Currently there’s none. There’s the challenge for ya!
What happens to the pips who had signed up for the service?
Its over!
All the same this proves what everyone in the ICT space knows….never work with Econet coz you heading for a bruising