So, until now ZOL’s entry price for fibre has been $149 which, if you’re like me, is a wait-for-cheaper price. That price has come. This week, ZOL announced via their social media pages that the entry price now is now $89. ZOL being the preachers of uncapped $89 is an unbelievably great deal for uncapped fibre.
But it’s not uncapped.
This service is capped at 20GB which is an about turn on last year’s talk about internet caps being “a very archaic method” of using the internet. The realities of internet economics in Zimbabwe it seems, call for archaic methods.
The new entry level package comes down at 5mbps, whichs great, but depending on your internet habits, that 20GB could vanish in days. This would defeat the purpose of lower priced internet coz you’d need to buy more. It’s not clear from the ZOL website how much more you’d need to pay but a contact at the company told us top ups start at $15 for 1GB all the way up to $120 for 10GB. In short, try to stay within the monthly allocation.
That said, for regular home use 20GB does sound like a lot. For home business, and some MOOC studying, YouTube entertainment, Skype video calling, and maybe torrents of your favourite series, maybe not so much. But I speak as a techie. Habits in the real world can be different and I’m curious to know yours in the comments.
Also note that whether ZOL’s or their competition’s 20GB (or whatever other package) is affordable or not also depends a lot on the coverage. If you just don’t have fibre at your gate you don’t have it. If you have it though, and the other options are not available, that 5 mbps is quite attractive. In fact, I’d say though that I’d personally go for the competition’s slower speed if available at less than $89.
ZOL’s $89 comes with other things as well: a ZOL landline that makes free calls to other ZOL numbers, and free international calls to the UK, USA, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore (our mistake, no free minutes on this package). For calls to other networks locally, you pay 12 cents a minute.
Entry packages aside, ZOL says it has doubled the speeds on all its fibre packages. The ultimate one, a $339 home package will technically deliver internet to you at 100mbps. You can check out ZOL’s fibre network coverage on their website.
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17 comments
Caps are not inline with ZimAsset
Hahahaha Nice
ah brilliant!!
as for me , 20 GB will last 10 – 14 days ( without sharing with others). don’t forget that the beta the download speed is, the more we download/stream movies and series
Won’t even last a a day.
Tv shows ~2.1 G.B (420p);
A movie or two ~2GB (420p);
Latest Debian release ~25GB
Other dev stuff ~10GB per day
I’d stick with their slower but uncapped wimax offering.
Internet services everywhere are almost always capped in some way. Either an ISP tells you that you have a cap or they tell you that you are uncapped while actually imposing a limit on what you can do, when you can do it and at what speed. Just as a supermarket would go broke if they let you take whatever you want from the shelves for a flat monthly fee, an ISP would go broke if they really gave you unlimited access for a flat monthly fee. It’s not archaic, it’s economics.
That it was archaic was actually ZOL’s own new position back last year. I think the question wasn’t if the internet was “limited” in some ways. ZOL have always been clear that they throttle usage to a certain speed depending on package/possible abuse etc…. Uncapped meant they’d throttle but wouldn’t put a cap on how much total data you used a month.
I am sticking to my UMAX $75 per month @ 1Mbps. 20GB + free surfing after 10pm its great. ZOL better do better than that, i see their cable everyday by my gate when i go to work, and always wondering when they are going to come up with a better deal that UMAX. The day they do that would be the day i will start to seriously think of signing on.
ZOL a little reminiscent of “you know who”. Nhava izere mhepo if their UMAX $59 per month @ 1Mbps (real speed, of up to 100kbps) is anything to go by.
I think they should have gone for throttling rather than caps, like after you’ve finished your 20G, your Internet speed could be reduced to 512K ….just my thoughts. .
If you look, it’s only the $89.00 entry level package that is capped. I don’t blame them otherwise they would loose all their $149.00 clients almost immediately. It sucks that there is a cap, but we’re all Zimbo’s, figure out a way to go for the next package up, if uncapped is that important, atleast until the packages change or there is some new competition.
Really, really!! Zambia of all the places has a $70 package at 4mbps…uncapped!!!!!!!! Why are we so excited at the prospect of being “almost” where we should have been yonks ago, Zambia, Zambia 😀 .
it’s enough for home use, just don’t “torrent your favorite series”. Buy a 50 cent disc!
saw a package on their website for $339.00, This is complete rip off of highest order. Thats £200 a month just for internet. When i was in England last year i was paying £18 for 120Mb speeds, unlimited, uncapped.
I tried last month ZOL $59 so called broadband package, it leaves a lot to be desired. Although its way better than disfunctional Powertel and Africom, the service is highly unreliable throughout the day
The $59 package is shitty during the day. Am thinking of migrating to Umax, use the 20GB maskati and enjoy free internet at night. Coz this package only affords me internet maheru anyways
Would only consider going the fiber route when they introduce Triple play offers like back home( Tv+ Internet+phone) at less than $ 30 on the 1Mps http://www.zuku.co.ke/fiber/fiber-packages
Fibre at $30 for 1mbps would be great and to be honest there is absolutely no reason why feline cannot offer that. In some countries with real internet the 1mbps package is not even a package but offered for free as a general service for subscribers so in the event you can’t pay your 15mbps package you can still surf on the one meg for free, like google fibre and the likes. Pipe dreams lol lol……. Telone was laying fibre cable outside my gate on the airport road so fingers crossed.