Today Econet was almost totally dead. A good number of their subscribers couldn’t call, receive calls, text, enquire balance and more importantly couldn’t EcoCash.
Not just today
The operator has been having problems for some time now. Data subscribers are experiencing slow speeds and buffering, which was unheard of on Econet LTE connections.
It’s not just them
Fellow MNO, Telecel has also been having same problems. Service has been intermittent for a while too. Calls just get dropped unexpectedly.
Maybe not their fault
The fact of the matter is that Zimbabwe is a very difficult place to operate a business right now. The telecoms regulator has been saying that telcos are not being prioritised by forex alloocators at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. I guess when the piggy bank minders can’t even keep the nation fueled, they won’t even look at telecom operators.
However, operators need to import equipment to keep their technology well oiled and working properly. They need the scarce fuel iyoyo to keep their towers beaming signal when ZESA goes to sleep and in places ZESA has not even bothered to have presence.
But NetOne
So we’ve been watching NetOne over the same period of time and they have been up and not sneezing. Other users have been confirming the same. Internet speeds have been good and predictable throughout even in peri urban places like Mt Hampden and Goromonzi.
Before people come with claws and clubs, this is not a scientific study. Based on user experience against user expectation, NetOne seems to be the most reliable mobile network operator in Zimbabwe right now.
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3 comments
Non govt institutions are not allowed to install radio equipment on state ground were the military will be located. That is why for net one they win on this one.
Another point to note is licensing of services which require forex yet we transact in Rtgs $.
The most precious of all is human resources no matter what happens people are in place to mitigate, control and resolve. We might talk about digital this and that but humans do the digital this and that
Are you implying that Econet does not have the human resources which Netone has?
The surprise shouldn’t be why econet is having these challenges. The mystery should be why it hasn’t been commonplace before. Econet is a behemoth. lt’s incomparable to netone on every metric. I still remember in the early 2000 when I first had a bank account. With the very few zimswith points around the network would perennially be down. Imagine with over 6 million active subscribers. Mukoma arikufudza mombe able to transact not to mention the millions of commercial transactions taking place daily. Food for thought…