Like all other issues to do with regulation, there’s a lot of pain and love lost when it happens after unknown boundaries are breached. As a the party on the receiving end, it’s the operator that faces an uncomfortable reality. Pay us what you owe us, or we will shut you down.
When we have written about TelOne’s Wi-Fi deal with Innscor, in recent weeks, ZOL leadership has made a point to make it clear to us that they actually have an exclusive Wi-Fi […]
The Zimswitch fees increase is retrogressive to the slow but positive plastic money uptake in Zimbabwe in that it will deter customers from using ATMs and POS if they cannot locate one from their own bank.
The government needs Econet to join in sharing infrastrucure to prevent itself from becoming the very same monopoly that Econet/ Liquid is.
Recently, Chipo Mtasa, the CEO of TelOne pointed out that the fixed telecoms operator had reached a debt repayment deal with Econet Wireless and Telecel. TelOne will pay $24 million to Econet and another $5 million to Telecel. Mtasa referenced a “tripartite offset arrangement” between Government, Telone and Econet and the extension of money towards…
A Zimbabwean entrepreneur, Dzidzai Chidumba, has his eyes set on launching his own MVNO. Called Viva Mobile with a 2016 (hopeful) launch date, Chidumba says Viva Mobile is meant to disrupt the existing telecoms market by delivering better products and services. We caught up with him and asked some questions related to Viva Mobile.
With the coming in of prepaid water, Councils should avoid the same mistakes that ZESA made with the prepaid electricity meters and coordinate on infrastructure rollout to reduce costs.
The suggestion of a WhatsApp ban is shocking, especially when we consider how it has made communication so much easier and cheaper. However, the latest numbers from the industry regulator suggest that its effect is huge on revenue and if the operators make that call, our favourite app could be banned.
It cannot be ignored that Telecel has been on a downward trend since 2012 if the subscriber numbers from Potraz are anything to go by. With the licence issues reaching boiling point early this year resulting in the most disruption on their timeline it is interesting to see how they will bounce back.
In a statement that clarifies its position on the series of job cuts it has effected, Econet has taken a shot at industry regulator, POTRAZ, accusing it of causing instability in the industry.
Banks have been given an ultimatum by the RBZ to submit financial inclusion plans within the next four months, a late development considering that banks have laid back while Ecocash and Telecash established a presence in the market.
As a people we don’t seem to see far enough to realise what is hurting the competition now (or just someone we don’t care about) will surely hurt us too eventually. We laugh that classifieds.co.zw is getting hit Econet and Stive while forgetting the same net-neutrality unfairness on us when they smell the blood.
It seems Econet, banking on its market share and business interests, is still unwilling to enable interoperability in some aspects of their services, particularly hand to hand wallet to wallet interfacing. This is unlike the competitors OneWallet, Telecash and Nettcash.
At the Broadband Forum, we learnt that POTRAZ will in the near future deploy Quality of Service monitoring equipment to ensure operators adhere to service agreements that ensure acceptable service standards. At the present moment, consumers are at the mercy of operators in the absence of regulations and in the wake of weak consumer protection.
This morning, the ministry of ICT, through arrangements facilitated by the telecoms regulator POTRAZ, is holding a closed-door breakfast meeting with the heads of the various telecoms operators.
The government was offered ownership and control in Telecel Zimbabwe and it has been reported that this offer is being taken up. This comes after the Minister of ICT mentioned this offer in an interview. However, this move doesn’t seem to make sense considering some facts on the ground.
It’s been a while since we had the standard weekly podcast, something that was only remedied by a lot of other interviews and discussions that we shared over the past […]
Tomorrow is Good Friday, so a lot of us are expecting one obvious thing to happen tomorrow, the start of the Easter Holidays and a long weekend that everyone looking forward […]
In business, sharing isn’t just about caring. There have to be fair benefits for everyone contributing to a communal pot. That’s the long and short version of what Econet has […]
It seems that playground dynamics are also relevant in the world business. If you force any group of people to share, whoever makes the biggest contribution is bound to complain. […]
1. Zimbabwe’s mobile penetration 87% now. This figure is based on the number of active sim cards in the country. 2. Zimbabwe’s total number of active SIM cards reported, […]
Sharing infrastructure in the telecommunications industry is a very complicated matter. The Reason boils down mostly to: I invested so much in expanding my infrastructure so that I compete effectively […]
For a while we have been talking about the lowered tariffs that local regulator POTRAZ ordered the MNOs to effect by the end of 2014. This was back in October […]
In this episode of the weekly Techzim podcast we discuss a host of trending topics in tech this past week. Some of the topics include the $20 Astro Goat WhatsApp […]
It looks like we are headed towards cheaper mobile money services and lower broadband prices if the State’s word is anything to go by. According to a report in the Herald. the […]
We’re just from a Telecel Zimbabwe press conference, where relatively new CEO, Francis Mawindi, was addressing local journalists, introducing himself and giving an update of what his company has accomplished […]
A few weeks ago we learnt that some local ISPs were considering not exhibiting at ICT Africa 2011 after finding out that Econet Wireless had snapped up 23 stands for the event, thereby dwarfing every other exhibitor by an epic scale. Things like this happen and are not surprising. However I was very disappointed by…