TelOne introduces data sharing, a first in Zimbabwe

In what is bound to be a first, TelOne is introducing data sharing starting today, 1 March 2021. As one would assume based on the title of this article, the service will allow TelOne users to share data among themselves.

Data sharing sounds simple enough it’s a wonder that as far as I can tell not one of the internet providers in our tea-pot shaped country had implemented it before this. One of the beloved members of our community who asked a question about this back in 2014, on Techzim answers, was helpfully told the only way they could do it was to send airtime.

Yomix also only allows you to share airtime. If you want to send data to someone you have to create a custom bundle and pay for it using Ecocash or airtime. That’s as far as you can share data if you can call that sharing. You cannot share data that you have actually bought. So yeah, TelOne’s service is surprisingly a first.

How to share data on TelOne

For reasons that should be obvious, data sharing will only work if you have a capped account. In order to share data you need to follow these steps:

1. First, you log in to any of TelOne’s Self-service platforms including the online portal
2. Enter the recipient’s TelOne phone number and the amount of data you want to transfer
3. To confirm the transfer a One Time Pin (OTP) will be sent to your registered number i.e. the mobile number associated with your account in TelOne’s system
4. You enter the OTP in order to confirm that you really want to send data
5. Once you enter the OTP the recipient’s data balance will be updated with the new balance and your data will be deducted with the corresponding amount.
6. You should note that the expiry date of the data will not change nor will even when you transfer it.

I can think of several situations where data sharing will be useful. Typically data gets cheaper per GB the more you buy but if you are on a shoe-string budget you can only buy data in small quantities and have to pay more per GB.

If you are anything like me and my friends in college this would be an opportunity to buy more for less, you just team up to buy a bigger bundle and share it however you want. You can even share it on a pro-rata basis depending on how much each friend chirped in.

Sharing data could also be useful if you have a lot of data left and it’s about to expire and you don’t know what to do with it. You can just send it to your friends, you know, data hogs like me who know how to chomp through data like i’s butter.

It could also be useful for companies whose employees do a lot of remote work. Instead of paying for each employee’s data you just buy a bucket load of it and divide it among your employees.

Everybody should really be doing this

I still cannot get over the fact that before this there was no data sharing. Hopefully, everyone else will follow TelOne’s lead on this especially Mobile Network Operators companies like MTN have had this for a while now.