Never run out of airtime with Telecel
Posted inConnectivity

Never run out of airtime with Telecel

Never run out of airtime, or is it get that airtime you need for that emergency call when your airtime has run out. As of Tuesday, selected Telecel prepaid customers (though for my check it seemed like everyone) can access an emergency $1 of airtime per request.
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Posted inConnectivity

Estimating the number of Facebook users in Zimbabwe

There has been a lot of curiosity about Zimbabwe’s Facebook population lately. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t provide Zimbabwe’s Facebook stats because of, well, you guessed it, we’re a bad people. Or at least the targeted US sanctions say some leaders here are.
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Posted inConnectivity

Kubatana maps Typhoid affected areas from crowd sourced info

Today, we stumbled upon a tweet by Kubatana.net announcing a map of Typhoid affected areas in Zimbabwe that the organisation has created from data crowd sourced via SMS. As you probably know Zimbabwe is currently battling a Typhoid epidemic. Currently over 1,000 cases have been reported.
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Posted inConnectivity

Google cars to start Street Viewing Botswana

Google has just announced on its Google Africa blog that the company’s Street View cars will start driving around Bostwana in the coming weeks to collect photographs for Google Street View. Street View allows users of Google Maps to get a 360 degree street-level photographic view of streets in Google Maps.
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Posted inConnectivity

30,000 Google Plus users in Zimbabwe

So how many Zimbabweans are on Google Plus? Well, according to a report by a Canadian company focusing on the social network’s demographics, about 30 000 people in Zimbabwe are on Google’s new social network. The global number of users on the platform is now estimated to have hit 90 million.
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Posted inConnectivity

Africom abandons afri-com.com domain to be used for adult content

Yesterday, we received a tip via Twitter that the Africom website (www.afri-com.com) had been compromised and that the website was showing some adult content. We alerted some friends at Africom and went on to check around for more information. The ‘compromised’ website is showing the following:
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Posted inConnectivity

Africa: The era of collaborative consumption has arrived

A new wave is sweeping across developed countries and can make a big impact in Africa. For those who thought group buying was the last big goldmine in ecommerce, collaborative consumption has triggered a new and sustainable rush. In a world struggling to recover from a rough economic patch and more importantly with waste and global warming; collaborative consumption has come to the rescue.
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Posted inConnectivity

The ‘dollar for 2’ Telecel SIM cards

A reader, Tatenda Dzumira, sent us photos recently of Telecel Zimbabwe agents busy on the streets of Bulawayo touting from a loud speaker the availability of “dollar for 2” Telecel SIM cards. The SIM cards are sold from the back of a pickup truck and new subscribers can buy and register for mobile services right there in the streets. “...in Bulawayo they are evrywhere” noted Dzimura, referring to the agents.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

Africom finally kills off the loss leading $18 bundle

In October 2010, Africom made a bold unprecedented move in the history of the internet in Zimbabwe. Fresh from the launch of its new red brand and mobile broadband services, the company announced the pricing of its data packages; the cost of a 1 gigabyte bundle was US $18. It was crazy. It was fantastic for the customers. We celebrated. For the first time in Zimbabwe, here was a company that understood that the internet was not a luxury for rich.
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Posted inConnectivity

Press Release: Telecel Zimbabwe rebrands

We're just back from the Telecel launch of the new brand which we have posted about here before. Telecel provided quite some information, which we will post in a update today later, but in the meantime, here's a press release prepared by the company announcing the new Telecel Zimbabwe brand.
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Posted inConnectivity Startups

Apps4Africa Climate Challenge for Southern Africa begins today

Today, 1 February 2012, is the commencement date for the southern Africa region Apps4Africa Climate Challenge. The challenge will run for 2 months to end of the 30th of March and invites African innovators to develop innovative, web-based and mobile technology solutions to local climate change challenges. According to the Apps4Africa website the challenge centers around the strategic themes that were debated and decided upon by world leaders at the 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) conference in South Africa last year. The challenge is sponsored by the US government.
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Posted inConnectivity

No prizes for guessing

Help us guess what company just started a teaser ad campaign in the local Zim print publications today. No prizes here.
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Posted inConnectivity

Africa Exchange to facilitate Government/ICT private sector event

Africa Exchange, an organisation working to promote regional and international trade and investment will be hosting an ICT event on the 10th of February (about a week from now) dubbed the “Meeting of Minds”. The event will be held in Harare and aims to bring together the ICT Ministry representatives and private players in the industry to discuss development strategies for the sector.
Posted inConnectivity

Econet Wireless Group triumphs in Nigeria

According to a press release posted on the Econet Wireless website today, the Federal High Court of Nigeria handed down judgment in favour of Econet in the dispute between the company and Bharti Airtel Nigeria. The matter stems from shareholding problems in 2003 and until now, Econet had failed to get any favorable outcome from the courts.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

How much the price of internet connectivity can reduce in one year

A year ago, US $50 per month unlimited broadband was only offered by one internet provider, the state owned PowerTel. Many would argue doesn’t really ‘need’ to make money. It wasn’t the best internet in town, largely because of congestion issues, but PowerTel afforded many small businesses and middle income earners an opportunity to have their own internet connection for the first time. The rest of the providers had prices north of $100 for any type broadband, forget unlimited.
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Posted inConnectivity

Alpha Media and iWay to host Stafford Masie at breakfast meeting

Alpha Media Holdings announced yesterday via a press release in one of its papers that the media group will be hosting Stafford Masie at a tech breakfast meeting to be held in Harare on the 17th of February. Alpha is holding the event in partnership with Telkom owned ISP, iWayAfrica.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

Econet launches Econet VoIP

Today, we attended the Econet VoIP launch we wrote about yesterday. We speculated a lot yesterday about what exactly the product is so we’re quite excited to reveal the accurate details today. Those of you that follow us on Twitter received the news in real-time as we heard it in the morning so no new stuff here for them.
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Posted inConnectivity

Mobile Penetration in Zimbabwe (2006 – 2011)

One of the interesting things presented at last week's JumpStart event, was the rise in mobile penetration in Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2011. The actual significant rise started in 2009 but 2006 shows just how low it was just a little over 5 years ago, 848,000 subscribers.
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