Strive Masiyiwa, Econet, on YouTube
Posted inConnectivity

Econet Wireless uses YouTube for PR in Nigeria dispute with Airtel

In mega disputes the kind Econet Wireless International fights globally, you need neutral parties seeing things from your angle, and as many voices on your side as you can get. When you understand this the way Econet does, the logical decision to take is to go out there and tell your story; the whole story according to how you saw things unfold from the beginning.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

Telecel has co-branding testing agreement with Opera Software

Last week, we posted that Telecel Zimbabwe started pushing updates of a co-branded version of the Opera Mini mobile browser to subscribers. The special Opera Mini browser has some Speed Dial shortcuts set to the Telecel website and its social media pages. We contacted Telecel to give us more information and they responded.
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Posted inConnectivity

LinkedIn Africa Stats: Zimbabwe sitting in 11th position

According to statistics published by zoomsphere, a social media analytics platform ,Africa has 5 772 194 registered users on LinkedIn. The information is as of February 27 2012 and digs into each African country’s most active companies by members and activity. Zimbabwe is understood to have 103 400 registered members, making it the 11th biggest Linkedin user base in Africa. The top twenty countries on the continent are as follows:
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Posted inConnectivity Startups

Umuntu shares more information about Mimiboard. Our brief thoughts

We first got information about Mimiboard from the Umuntu founder, Johan Nel, some 9 days ago. Nel was to later announce the new service which at the just ended Mobile Web East Africa in Nairobi. Nel says they’ve had developers working for 7 months, to come up with the product , which he say is going to be “a game changer in the African market.”
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Posted inConnectivity Startups

Esoko seeks Zimbabwe partners

Ghanaian based mobile agri-business service platform startup Esoko, is seeking partners in Zimbabwe to extend its services to the country. In a request for tender published in Zimbabwe’s newspapers over the last several days, Esoko has invited local companies to apply to run Esoko in the country as 'Prime Licensees'.
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Posted inConnectivity

Climate Challenge brainstorming session in Harare

If you have been scratching your head struggling to come up with an idea or strategy for the Climate Apps4Africa Climate Challenge, well the funders of challenge, The US embassy, have some good news for you; there’s going to be a brain storming session for the challenge in two weeks. The US embassy in Harare just made an announcement on its Facebook Page this morning.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

SA town, Stellenbosch, to get Wi-Fi cloud

Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa, is set to get a Wi-Fi cloud over it offered in the next six months. According to a report in South African tech news site MyBroadband, The Wi-Fi will be available free of charge to anyone, and users of the service will not be required to register.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

EASSy cable down

The East Africa Submarine System (EASSy) has a section of its undersea fibre cable broken since 17 February 2012. The broken section is between Djibouti and Port Sudan and according to reports, WIOCC, the consortium that owns the cable, has already started efforts to repair the cable.
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Posted inConnectivity

Zimbabwe’s image problem: Facebook caning linked to human rights abuse

Zimbabwe clearly has an image problem. When we posted a note on Monday about the caning sentence for a Chiredzi boy who ‘slandered’ a local woman on Facebook, we sincerely thought two cane strokes was not a big deal. Really. For us the important thing was that someone had managed to get some kind of assistance from the law for having their image tarnished on Facebook. International journos and bloggers had a different take it.
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Posted inConnectivity

Why Africa needs more home grown brands

Every year, Interbrand undertakes an extensive probe to determine the world’s top 100 brands. The branding consultancy is among the world’s frontline experts in its field. Along with a parallel ranking conducted by Brand Finance, Interbrand’s top 100 brands survey has become a global standard.
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Posted inConnectivity

With Truscto agreement expired, Econet kills Ecolife

Today, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe announced in a public notice that as the Ecolife agreement with Trustco has expired, the mobile operator is unable to continue offering the mobile life insurance product. Econet says it will honor any claims from beneficiaries entitled to the cover as at midnight 17 February 2012.
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Posted inConnectivity

Zimbabwe boy to be caned for Facebook mischief

We’re reading the Herald this morning that a 17-year old boy in Chiredzi (a town in south-east Zimbabwe) has been sentenced to two strokes of a cane by a local magistrate after being convicted of posting pictures of a local woman and describing her as a prostitute on the popular social network.
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Posted inConnectivity

How good is your internet lingo?

So, do you talk the talk? We thought of putting together some of the trending internet vocabularies (mostly abbreviations actually) that are dominating conversations on the web, how much do you know?
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Posted inConnectivity

The ups and downs of the H-Metro website

It must be extremely frustrating being an H-Metro fan on the internet. You never really know if you’ll be able to access the tabloid's website on any given day. The website, www.hmetrozim.com, goes up and down like a yo-yo. We get tips in our mailboxes numerous times from readers tipping us the website is down. We don’t check each time anymore.
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Posted inBroadband

After extended trial run, Econet begins charging for MMS

Yesterday Econet announced it had begun charging for its Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). The service was launched in mid-December last year and ran on trial since for two months. Initially, the trial period was meant to last until the end of December.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

biNu is shortlisted for a GSMA award

Several days ago, we asked on our Facebook Page if there were any fans that are still using biNu. Most of the responses we got show that people still do. Lots of them. Some even said they are actively selling biNu credits locally. We are learning this shouldn’t come as a surprise; The Australia –based Startup has made quite some impressive achievements since we last checked back in September 2011.
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