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  • Using airtime as currency

    Given our country’s limitations in payment systems, especially web based ones, I have encountered a number of entrepreneurs that have talked about developing solutions that enable users to pay for goods and services using their mobile phone airtime.

  • Egypt jails a blogger

    In a precedent-setting development in Egypt, a blogger has been arrested for blogging content that ‘insulted the military’. The blogger, Maikel Nabil, was arrested in March and has been sentenced to a 3 year prison term by a military tribunal for the crime.

  • The rise of 3G – (ITU 2010 World ICT facts and figures)

    We just thought we would post here an ITU depiction of 3G connectivity world over from a report titled “The World in 2010, ICT facts and figures”. We were quite struck with how Zimbabwe compares to the majority of African countries.

  • TelOne tariffs unsustainably low

    Yesterday, the state owned daily published an article titled “Low Tariffs Affect Parastatals Infrastructure”. You can find it here. The article mentions Air Zimbabwe, Agribank, National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, Cold Storage Company, Grain Marketing Board and TelOne in a list of state companies that registered interim losses of up to 46.4 million to October…

  • Mobile data services: Challenges and opportunities

    As I take a look at the local mobile application emerging market and use of cell phones, I will start by warning our mobile operators that their business can be easily shrunk by highlighting the threat in Bill Gates and Craig Mundie statements. “PC is the phone and phone is the PC.”and “People in those…

  • Africom and Valley Technologies to launch mobile phone networks

    News tips we’re getting are all suggesting strongly that Internet Access Providers (IAPs), Africom and Valley Technologies will be launching mobile phone networks soon. “Soon” here could ofcourse mean anything from a couple of weeks (at best) to a few months. We’re guessing, from what we know so far, the most would be 2 months.

  • Techzim Exclusive Interview with ForgetMeNot Africa COO, Jeremy George

    We had an exclusive interview with ForgetMeNot Africa’s Chief Operating Officer, Jeremy George. We discussed the Message Optimiser (MO), the company’s flagship product. We also discussed its implementation on mobile networks in Africa and the SMS traffic the system processes. At the end of the interview, George give us his opinion on mobile solution trends…

  • How artists can use new media to survive music piracy

    It happens all the time; a comfortable status quo gets disrupted by new convenient ways to go about doing everyday things. For people benefiting from the status quo, this usually means having to somehow find a way to play the new game. But dealing with change when it threatens your livelihood is not always an…

  • Google to open office in Harare, recruiting locals (April Fools)

    Google Africa has announced that it will be opening an office in Zimbabwe in the coming months. The office will be in located in Harare and will become one of Google’s biggest offices in Sub-Saharan Africa after Kenya and South Africa. Zimbabwe, Google says, with one of the highest literacy rate in Africa, is a…

  • TelOne’s fibre connection on EASSy now live, total 2.48 Gbps lit

    The Harare-Mozambique TelOne backbone fibre is now live. The state owned fixed telecoms operator has announced that the cable now links the state owned fixed operator to the East African Submarine System (EASSy) undersea cable through Mozambique. TelOne has taken up initial capacity of 2.48 Gbps (16 x STM-1s) and according to the company the…

  • Seacom: Our cable has had some challenges since inception

    Seacom this week admitted that its submarine fibre cable that landed on the east Africa coast in July 2009, “has had challenges since inception”. The statement was made by Seacom’s head of business development, Aidan Baigriecable. The admission comes as Seacom considers buying backup undersea fibre capacity from other submarine fibre cable operators.

  • Econet warns subscribers of disconnections as registration grace period expires

    When the mobile registration deadline expired last month, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) conceded to a one month grace period before mobile operators start disconnecting unregistered subscribers. The grace period expires tomorrow. As it approaches, Econet has started issuing warnings through the press to subscribers that come the end of the…

  • Econet’s intention to launch BlackBerry courts the state’s interest

    Over the past few months, information in the ICT sector has been suggesting Zimbabwean mobile operators are working to get RIM’s BlackBerry services on the local networks. Reports like this one on Telecel we did in December last year. It’s not clear how much progress Telecel has made seeing the engineer said to be working…

  • CABS, POSB to use Telecel mobile banking platform through Zimswitch Mobile

    Telecel Zimbabwe has just revealed to Techzim that it’s working with Zimswitch Mobile to include more banks on its mobile banking platform. Telecel launched the Skwama mobile banking services in January this year but only provided the service to subscribers banking with Zimbabwe’s Kingdom Bank.

  • Press Release: Pastel announces dates for Evolution upgrades

    Pastel Software Zimbabwe will launch two upgraded versions of Pastel Evolution this year. Version 6.60 will be launched in Zimbabwe in July and Version 6.70 in October, participants in a series of seminars held in Harare were told. The seminars, which focused chiefly on Pastel Evolution and various applications of Evolution, such as Branch Accounting,…

  • More information revealed on the Nhava Scandal

    On the first day of this month, a local daily NewsDay called out Nhava Global for duping Zimbabweans into thinking they design and manufacture netbooks. We posted our thoughts on what is now officially the Nhava scandal. Today, the NewsDay published a follow-up on the article titled “Nhava Global saga rages on”.

  • NetOne’s OneWallet running on Gemalto’s mobile money transfer solution

    Gemalto, an international digital security company, announced today that NetOne is deploying a Gemalto mobile money transfer solution called LinqUs for the OneWallet service. The OneWallet service was launched by NetOne to stakeholders in January this year becoming the second mobile money transfer service in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s second largest mobile operator, Telecel, launched the first…

  • New Econet service powered by eTXT. SMS to Email, Chat and Facebook

    Today, an email tip pointed us to a new product to be launched soon by Econet Wireless Zimbabwe. We’re not sure what the product will be named but it can be found right now on www.etxt.co.zw and it’s already active. The service allows you to use SMS to communicate seamlessly with Email, Instant Messaging (Gtalk,…

  • Review: A solar powered mobile phone

    Last month, we attended the Econet Energy launch in Harare. At the event Econet gave out some solar powered ZTE-G S316 mobile phones to everyone attending. For us it was a convenient opportunity to review the solar powered mobile phones and provide our general opinion on them.

  • Zim university student develops business apps & working on virus removal software

    We first heard about Luke Madzedze at the Research and Intellectual Expo at the University of Zimbabwe some 4 weeks ago. At the expo, we saw some desktop and Java mobile applications whose development was attributed to the young man. We arranged to meet Madzedze and finally did last week in Harare.

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