Econet Suspending Bundles, Don’t Worry Nobody Said WhatsApp

Zimbabwe’s largest mobile network operator, Econet Wireless has advised that they are reviewing some of their bundles. The company says they are in some process of optimizing their data, voice and SMS bundles.

Econet says as they do this, they have to suspend some of the bundles that are on offer. Here are the bundles they are suspending:

$1 bundle of joy

This is a voice bundle which gives subscribers 10 minutes call time when calling other Econet numbers. The caveat though is that the bundle expires at midnight no matter what time you bought it. If you buy it 2 minutes before midnight that means the bundle is going to expire before you have had the chance to use it up. Proper Cinderella type thing.

$0.50 SMS bundle

When you buy this bundle it allows you to send 130 SMS texts in a week. It expires after a week.

$3 Daily data bundle

For $3 you get 2GB mobile data, basically the only thing that matters. Econet of course throws in other stuff that a few people ever redeem. On this bundle they give you 2GB access at their WiFi hotspots, 2GB to access Kwese iFlix, their video streaming app. They also give you a free VIP pass to Kwese iFlix content for the day. This gives you access to all the content on the platform.

You have less than a week

All the three bundles above will be suspended effectively on the 27th of March, that’s less than 7 days away. You better enjoy them while they last, I doubt they will come back in the form described above if they come back at all. Most probably whatever is coming afterwards will not be as good as what’s going away.

Why are they doing this?

Of course Econet says they are optimizing their bundle offerings. It’s true but I assume what they mean by optimizing is more toward their business priorities than your pocket.

You have to sympathize with these guys. Their regulator is refusing to authorize tariff increases when everything around them is going up and more importantly their capacity to keep a world class network operating smoothly is severely impacted.

So yea, it should be no surprise that Econet are now looking for more creative ways to earn more per user and they will be getting rid of ‘freebies.’

The one to miss for me is the $1 bundle of joy. What’s yours?