Econet offering free 640 MB, discount of up to 25% if you’re browsing on its WiFi Zone

Mobile data is expensive and there’s nothing that can be done about it in the short term. Let’s not flood the regulator, POTRAZ, with our complaints. Our best bet is in the shift in economic conditions that might get operators to angle for our money with promos and discounts.

But this doesn’t seem to happen too often, even with us buying less data. There is, however, one discount that has been offered by Econet through its Econet WiFi Zone. You can  get 640 MB and discounts of up to 25% if you are browsing with data bundles on Econet WiFi Zone.

Econet WiFi Zone, by the way, is the service that Econet had on trial in 2014 and officially launched early this year. Econet WiFi Zone offers mobile data offloading that gives any mobile broadband subscriber the option to migrate from a connection on the Econet mobile broadband network and opt instead to use a nearby Econet WiFi connection. This gives

Besides lessening the congestion on the network, this gives access to a connection that is likely going to be faster, seeing that WiFi Hotspots are reliant on fibre connections.

You can get more details on how to use it and links to the Android App related to the service by following this link.

The 640MB freebie applies to a purchase of $50 worth of data bundles, but there are 2 other offers of free data (125MB and 256MB) that apply to $20 and $35 bundles. With such an arrangement, it’s also not surprising then that the discount on the browsing is “up to” 25% although there’s a sliding scale that kicks off some discounts on lower denominations as well.

I’m not entirely sold on the discounts and the freebie totals. The data is still expensive and I think that Econet can offer something sweeter than 640MB free after I’ve spent $50 on them. Besides, why should I spend $20 on mobile data to essentially get access to a WiFi hotspot?

The bottom line is the data cost is still pretty high, even with that kind of carrot. With the other two operators not offering anything that competes with this, Econet can price this in whatever way suits it, and we have to humbly accept what is on the table.