As you may remember, in December last year, Telecel Zimbabwe extended its mobile broadband test to a wider group of Telecel subscribers. Not all subscribers, just a larger group. We’ve just learnt that during this period Telecel quietly opened up mobile broadband to non-Telecel subscribers as well.
We were tipped by a friend yesterday and we went to the Telecel Zim Head office to verify the facts. If you’ve been looking for some free broadband you might want to visit Telecel too.
Basically, all you need to do is buy a USB dongle from Telecel for US $65, plug it into a computer and you start browsing for free. That’s it. Telecel is referring to the internet connection as a data line; This means the line doesn’t do your regular voice calls. Unless of course you use Skype or some other such tool.
In terms of quality, from our experience using Telecel’s mobile broadband since December, it is quite usable but far from perfect. A random check we did in January indicated users are finding it ‘satisfactory’. Our take is that it probably needs some more tweaking. I’m using it right now as I write this post and it’s hiccuping roughly 10 percent of the time. I guess that’s why they’re not shouting on rooftops about this offering.
It’s not clear how long this will last, or if Telecel will start charging for the usage. We just don’t know, and Telecel has been telling us launch is early this year.
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23 comments
Telecel relies on Powertel for its international link, from my view, as long as Powertel does not put its house in order, there wont be anything to cheer about!
True that, but if their internal infrastructure is solid, then they can always switch from Powertel to someone else. #bottleneck
Norman, l think they will be stuck with Powertel for a while because of interconnection problems btwn ISPs, it is only the ISP which is willing to give other ISP bandwidth on there network, even Econet uses Powertel, like l have always said before, Powertel is having problems with their Tech guys, they have the best equipment but dont have top notch engineers to optimise them.
This is great. Econet will need competition is needed to improve their service (speed and pricing model.)
i like your focus on free things, it seems you are always on the look for free internet. Hakunawo here kumwe kunezvemaHara zvisiri INTERNET ACCESS
well, this is an internet…forum isnt it…you want kuti tiite converse ngezvekunotenegeswa hangaiwaire?
what are the internet settings for telecel broadband. is there anyone who can give me the access point and the config. i would to give it a try if it works if one simply have those settings, in the past when econet was during the test phase those settings would cause interenet to functiom
hey folks!,is Telecel 3G also available in Marondera,the CS at Telecel are not answering their fones?…more like the infamous 111 scheme?
Funniest comments section ever!!
Try this http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/apple-eats-microsoft/#disqus_thread
Can someone, anyone……… let me know what the connection speed is for this Telecel dongle before i spend my hard earned dollar on it. Basically what i need to know “is it good for downloading” or you would have to wait…….and…..wait…..or make tea while it struggles to download a 10mb file (for example).
Cook dinner instead….
really? is it that bad Itai ? can you give me some spec’s. the Customer Support people seem to have no idea, the phone was passed on to 3 different people yesterday when i asked and i still did’nt get a proper answer.
connection speeds wil depend on the technolgy they are using….hope these guys are looking into the future….hspa and lte
hamawe..tichirikure panyaya dzetelecomms
I had been using the telecel since yesterday, and its seems like it only works during the day as in the evening its just difficult to do anything online. the speeds are fairly okay but when i tried to open a 8mb file the window constantly said that 20 minutes left which never reached. so this dongle is excellent in terms of viewing webpages and not downloading files as i ran into problems when i tried to do so. below are some results of the speed tests i did on the dongle, hope this will be useful to you, depending on the location of the site servers of the webpage you want this telecel dongle stutter or spring into action fast.
One thing though which I suprisingly found out is that this dongle speed in terms of downloading stuff is quite lower than the speed of uploading things onto the internet. This dongle uploads very fast, I uploaded many photos on facebook within a few minutes. this thing is fast in uploading but the downloads are a problem something I hope will be taken care of before the finally product
Thanks Ghost ! that’s the info i have been looking for before i purchase my own dongle…………..again thanks.
Can you browse the net on a phone if you remove the line from the dongle ???
telecel mahala
http://www.speedtest.net
For PowerTel I get 0.09Mbps download
Telecel – can’t open the page to do the test 🙁
What sorts of speeds does everyone else get?
what if you want to use your cellphone for the internet service what do you have to do?