TelOne is very much known for being the most reasonably priced ISP in Zimbabwe making it the most favored choice for home internet. However, for a long time, the performance of TelOne’s internet has been the biggest factor pushing its subscribers away towards more expensive but better-performing providers. TelOne saw a dip in broadband subscriber figures by 1,870 subscribers in 2021 and 2022. Recently Telone announced that it has completed its network upgrade which should improve the performance of its network for its subscribers.
The Network Upgrade
There is not much detail on the specifics of the network upgrade apart from it being primarily a core network performance improvement. This said improvement is looking at quality of service which refers to the speed of the package you are on.
Telone mentions that this upgrade is primarily targeted at ADSL and Fiber customers with some experiencing improved speeds of 15 to 50Mbps on Fiber and 2 to 14Mbps on ADSL. When looking at the TelOne X page (formerly Twitter), The comments on their upgrades suggest that their customers are still facing poor internet speeds.
@TelOneZW for the efforts put in stabilizing your infrastructure, we however seem to be still having some challenges on download speeds, sometimes we will actually be offline. May you kindly look into this.
Twitter commets on TelOne’s upgrade post
There no change after your upgrade. Is it still ongoing ?
Yooohhh there is nothing that has improved, it’s just the same old story or even worse for me
My landline had cut recently and when it was fixed (around the time when you first posted about the network upgrade) i did see an improvement to my adsl download speeds (from around 3.6mbps max to 6mbps max), though its still very slow for mordern day tasks
Let’s look at TelOne’s capacity
According to their 2022 annual report, TelOne has 133,617 broadband subscribers and an installed bandwidth capacity of 142.5Gbps. Doing a bit of rough math this works out to a guaranteed 1.066Mbps for each TelOne subscriber. Not exactly a lot.
Telone mentions that this upgrade is primarily targeted at ADSL and Fiber customers with some experiencing improved speeds of 15 to 50Mbps on Fiber and 2 to 14Mbps on ADSL. When looking at the TelOne X page (formerly Twitter), The comments on their upgrades suggest that their customers are still facing poor internet speeds.
Granted in the real world it’s highly improbable for every internet user to be using the internet all the time, neither is it possible for each internet user to be demanding maximum bandwidth from their ISP at all times. So with those realities in mind, it is possible for a user to get the promised 15Mbps that their package allows for. However, it is now best effort which is why ISPs in general use the term ‘up to 15Mbps’. It’s a bandwidth cap rather than a guaranteed download speed.
So if the network inherently still faces congestion then this might still pose performance issues for subscribers since the outright capacity of the network does not offer enough headroom to reach the bandwidth caps that subscribers are expecting to get.
We will be running another survey to find out the reality of fixed internet service providers similar to the one we did for mobile internet service providers. If you are a TelOne ADSL or Fiber subscriber, let us know in the comments how you are finding your internet speeds.
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27 comments
Maybe you can look at the TelOne tariff adjustments they said they would implement on 20 October.
Thanks to all at Techzim for the large number of articles you have produced in the past two weeks. Keep it up!
Can you please look into the new tariff structure which TelOne had said they will be implementing on 20 October.
Thanks to all at Techzim for the many articles you have given us in a very short period of time! It was more like ToS (Techzim on Steroids)!
Apologies for a duplication. The mobile network played up and made it appear as if my initial response had been truncated
Does anyone have the Pindula apk URL?
Didn’t they say something like stopping the service sometime in October or thereabouts. Let me check if mine is still working
Pindula apk can be download from store
Download from store
pindula19.apk
Anyone have a Pindula apk URL? Please help!
My performance has greatly improved. I wouldn’t finish a football match without the stream buffering. My speed has stabilised at around 12Mbps and can run 3 concurrent HD streams. I can say I’m definitely enjoying and TelOne can take my money now. Actually thinking of upgrading to Unlimited
Telone charges increased by 100% on 20 October 2023 rather steep now unaffordable
Congratulations you didn’t mention starlink throughout the article
Do they even have to? The cynical amongst us will read between the lines of this action anyway. Every isp boardroom surely felt the temperature rise in recent months. Some will ignore and others will scramble to do what they should have been doing all along thanks to the spectre of StarLink.
You need to find lasting solutions, like having cables in the ground.
It’s all lies I’m on fibre before the upgrade used to get 32-40Mbps then during the upgrade it went to 8Mbps .. then after It’s now worse 1.2Mbps ..i have been calling them ,DM on X … nothing has changed… apo I’m the same package homeboost 200GB
That’s the package speed. Check on website. https://www.telone.co.zw/products/details/home-boost
Ahhh, so maybe this wasn’t so much an upgrade as it was an attempt at fixing bandwidth leaks. Looking at the responses though, the results seem very mixed.
It says 5mbps… I’m getting 1.2 to 1.8
…when you ask or call them they say fibre you get upto 20Mbps hazvina basa kuti which package you are on.. it’s either they are lying to customers intentionally or those responding havana info yakakwana either way their network is trash after the upgrade.
https://twitter.com/TelOneZW/status/1715680929681703195?t=0xq26vJowMplufEVhZNEhQ&s=19
Check this response from telone upto 20Mbps on fibre on all packages.. false advertisement kubira vanhu
Speeds where ranging between 45mb to 60mb when we put fibre tts about 5 months ago now is around 15 to 20mb
I m facing challenges in using Telone of late. I dont know what has gone wrong because it used to be good in Gwanda. There must be another factor contributing to this. Maybe its expertise on the job i m not sure though
Telone is now totally crap now . It’s unusable in Bulawayo. It’s about time everyone boycotts this nonsense. Everything in Zim is utter garbage or overpriced
I don’t know about other locations but in Bulawayo, our unlimited ADSL package have trouble loading gmail let alone attach a file. Never bother rely on it if you have an important Virtual Meeting.
There’s been a noticeable difference in my adsl speeds since the upgrade, from circa 0.7mbps to circa 2.3mbps. Still a lot to be desired but I hope this upgrade is not a once-off event and that telone continue to improve the quality of their service.
in Bulawayo I have not really experienced extra speed but the stability has improved – not so much downtime and buffering. I still think they haven’t installed enough capacity and the network gets congested
ALL of the service providers currently in Zim are all pathetic! If it is not overcrowded its just simply pathetically slow. Really we do not have internet in ZIM!
Great