Econet bundle prices going up on 8 Feb, you will have to deal with it

You know the deal, you are used to it now. You should be. The annual inflation rate has been falling since September 2022 but it was still 229.8% in January. That means rising prices and airtime will not be an exception.

Econet wants you to know that bundle prices will be going up tomorrow, the 8th of February. Consider it an early Valentine’s present.

The last time Econet adjusted their prices was in September 2022. So, it has been just over 5 months using those old tariffs. It’s crazy that in Zimbabwe, going for 5 months without a price increase is somewhat of a win for consumers. The honeymoon is over though.

Says Econet,

Dear Customers.

Please take note, there will be changes in ZWL Voice, Data, SMS bundles effective Wednesday, 08 February 2023.

The communication only says there will be changes, it doesn’t say whether it’s increases or decreases but we don’t need to be prophets to know which way this is going to go – it’s up. I do hope vanondinyadzisa and announce some downward revisions but it would sooner rain guava-flavoured maheu before that happens IMO.

While I understand the inflation issue, I still think some of the bundles are expensive as is. Take the Private Wifi bundle for example, it costs ZW$14,845.32 to get 8GB valid for 30 days. Even using a crazy rate of 1:1100 it costs US$13.50. That’s US$1.69 for 1GB of data. That is expensive and yet that price is set to increase.

I feel short-changed whenever I purchase a 65MB WhatsApp bundle for ZW$419.16. I’m going to feel silly purchasing that same bundle for more than that.

We don’t know what the new prices will be but I think we’ll see at least a 30% increase. I hope they won’t apply the same percentage increase to all bundles. As we saw, some like the Private Wifi bundle should not be seeing any price increase.

There was no talk of any USD bundle price increases. I hope that’s the case because there is no reason to raise those.

[Update: an earlier version of this story had the Private Wifi bundle price at ZW$18557 as is on the Econet bundles page on their website. This is not the price you’ll see if you dial *143# and so it’s not the current price. Could the ZW$18557 be the new price we should expect to see tomorrow then? We will know soon enough.]

Also read:

Why is internet so expensive in Zimbabwe?

Econet new voice, SMS, and data bundle tariffs effective 1 September 2022