Econet Introduces Per Second Billing

Today, Econet, Zimbabwe’s largest mobile operator announced that it has introduced ‘per second’ billing for its subscribers. The move is in compliance with regulatory requirements issued by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) earlier this year.

Econet is the second operator to introduce this billing method after state owned mobile operator NetOne introduced it back in May this year. Econet has actually gone a little further than NetOne by making the new billing method available across networks and on international calls. NetOne’s ‘per second’ billing is only for available calls within the network.

Stressing how this will make Econet the most affordable network, Econet says:

With Econet being the only provider to offer per second billing across networks and on international calls, the biggest savings will be made on the Econet network. Per second billing will apply during peak and off-peak hours.

On why it took several months to implement this service Econet’s CEO Mr. Douglas Mboweni explained that Econet had upgraded its network to enable it to cope with the rise in traffic volumes anticipated from the introduction of per second billing. “The cost of making calls will be cheaper, so traffic volumes will increase. We had to first clear issues of capacity before opening up to per second billing,” he said.

Econet has not indicated yet how much a call will cost per second but we’re guessing it’s just the prevailing cost per minute divided by 60 seconds. In some countries ‘per second’ calling rates are a bit more expensive than the normal ‘per minute’ rate.

Econet’s move effectively makes Telecel (the second largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers) the only operator still using the ‘per minute and 30 seconds thereafter’ billing method. Lately, Telecel has been receiving some good press over flexible and affordable call deals and being the last to offer a service many subscribers are demanding might take a lot of that.

UPDATE(24 August ’10): We just heard back from Econet. It’s confirmed. The rate per second is “current tariff divided by 60. That makes 0.0038 on intra-Econet and 0.0042 across.”