Since the beginning of the month, Zimbabwe’s mobile operators (Econet, NetOne and Telecel) have been terminating a number of their voice and data promotions as well as bonus offerings.
No reason has been provided for the terminations other than the shift of blame to the regulator, but the biggest frustration for subscribers has been the loss of products that made the already expensive telecoms services a bit cheaper.
There’s been a bit of confusion about what was terminated and what is still active on each of the mobile networks, so here’s a look at what each of these operators has since suspended.
Econet Wireless
- The Econet 7X Bonus Airtime Promotion – Offered subscribers 7 times the maount spent on meeting a daily and weekly airtime usage target
- The Daily Bundle Bonus WiFi Data – offered double the amount of data bought as a daily data bundle
- Kwese Bundles – Zero rated bundles for internet TV service- not yet operational
NetOne
- MaBundles Reappear Data Promotion
- 48-Hour Data and SMS Combo
Offered subscribers 270MB of data for $1, valid for 48 hours
Telecel
- Mega Bonus Promotion
- On – net voice Bundles
- Twitter Bundles
According to information gathered from the mobile networks, the services that weren’t suspended such as the NetOne OneFusion, Dollar a Day, WhatsApp and Facebook bundles as well as the day data bundles are classified as products and not promotions.
The regulator is yet to clarify on the criteria used to determine what is set as product and what is classified as a promotion.
In the meantime, subscribers will have to wait for the next round of promotions that get approved or for a tariff reduction that will make communication a bit cheaper.
5 comments
The reason is simple….making it expensive for the common zimbabwean to access data will make it difficult for people to communicate on social media, and hence less “social media abuse” or “cyber terrorism” as they call it. At least that’s someone’s hope!!!!!
This bill is going to turn critical citizens into criminals and diasporans accustomed to free speech into exiles (for real real!).
Lol, wrong article!
Sorry about that Billbo Zimgins. We’ve since fixed the issue and you’ll get redirected to tha proper article.
Suspended implies they were otherwise still valid and not end of life as Potraz said. Has there been any further clarification on that?