I’m told in less than 24 hours Ecoweb will announce their new VSAT satellite Internet services. No Information yet on pricing but that shouldn’t be hard to get once they go public with it. VSAT implementation in Zimbabwe has been contentious issue with the regulator POTRAZ, who at one point went (or threatened to) around the country unplugging illegal VSAT installations. International bandwidth is currently very expensive with ISPs charging around US $2,000 for a dedicated 256kb link.
This, and the poor fixed telecommunications infrastructure in remote areas, led many ingenious entrepreneurs to explore other methods of landing the commodity to clients at international competitive rates but POTRAZ wouldn’t hear of it. To make their position clear (and much to the frustration of the ingenious fellows) POTRAZ suspended issuing any new Internet Access Provider licenses indefinitely.
Assuming the Ecoweb solution is affordable, they are positioned to win over corporate clients and NGOs working in remote areas. Failed by TelOne, organisations had to come up with all sorts of expensive (both monetarily, and legally) solutions just to communicate with counterparts in their remote offices.
I’m also told Ecoweb will start offering 4G before the end of the year… that, before I’ve even signed up for 3G!
