Posted inConnectivity

The 2011 ICT Achievers Awards ceremony (pictures)

As you may know, the ICT Achievers Awards were held recently. We have posted a couple of stories about them here and will be posting more in the coming days. In the meantime, we have posted pictures of the event to our Facebook Page and we thought we would share that with you here.
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Posted inConnectivity

Thank you

Most of you readers will be logging off your work machines this week, and since most of our readers access Techzim from work, we just want to express our gratitude while we still have your attention.
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Posted inConnectivity

Technology is NOT killing the music industry

An interesting article by Fred Zindi titled “Technology killing music industry” appeared in the Herald of the 6th of December. Fred Zindi is a professor at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a musician and an author of several books on music. His case is based on the assertion that the ability by people to make copies of music illegally, easy and cheap access to blank CDs and CD writing equipment which was impossible when he started his career as the ultimate source.
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Posted inConnectivity

Econet launches MMS

Over the weekend, Econet Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) on trial to all its customers. The trial runs until end of December and for that period, subscribers will be able to and send free unlimited MMS messages on the network. After the trial period, a single SMS will cost US 15 cents during peak periods and a cent less off-peak. All SMS messages will have a 1 megabyte (MB) limit.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

Utande on the reasons broadband is expensive in Zimbabwe

Local Internet access provider (IAP), Utande, published a column titled “Techno Talk” in a local weekly last week. First, we’d like to commend them for this and we hope the column is going to be a regular one. It’s not every day that an internet provider comes out to say their view of connectivity issues, so it’s quite a welcome development.
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Posted inConnectivity

Zimbabwe ICT Achievers Awards winners announced

The Zimbabwe ICT Achievers Awards ceremony was held tonight at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Harare. The annual awards are in their second year. Guest of honor at the event tonight was Zimbabwe Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirayi.
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Posted inBroadband Connectivity

Nollywood on YouTube: Nigerians and Ugandans get ‘local’ YouTube

Over the past two weeks, Google has launched it's video service, YouTube, in Nigerian and Uganda. According to the announcements on the Google Africa blog, the local versions of the world’s most popular video service will provide by default more relevant content to the two countries. YouTube in the two countries will show visitors the most viewed and most subscribed-to channels in in the country.
Posted inConnectivity

Press Release: Drishti and Africcs join forces to serve the CIM Industry in Zim

Drishti-Soft, a leading CIM technology innovator, and Africcs, Zimbabwe's leading customer care consultancy firm, enter into a business alliance to tap the huge contact center market of Zimbabwe and neighboring countries. With a presence in more than 15 other countries of African Continent, Drishti further strengthens its base through this partnership.
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Posted inConnectivity

Fes’bhuku play: The impact of social media on Zimbabwe’s rural communities

If you’re in Harare, you love theatre, and have an interest in the impact of the internet and social media on social and political issues, here’s something you’ll not want to miss: From 7 December (Yesterday) to 17 December 2011, a play called Fes’bhuku will be showing at Theatre in the Park in Harare. The term "Fes’bhuku" is a loan translation of "Facebook" into the Shona vernacular.
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Posted inConnectivity Startups

Digital music sales in Zimbabwe. Taking it to the next level

Online music stores have been on the rise globally and continue to gain momentum. Selling music files on a per-song, albums and/or subscription basis at lower prices has become a phenomenon. Online music stores such as iTunes and Amazon MP3are now the biggest music retailers in the US, selling almost 25% of all music in the US. This represents opportunities for businesses in developing ICT markets like Zimbabwe and can help revive the countries' music industries which have been on a downward spiral.
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Posted inConnectivity

Firewall of China: paranoia or sovereignty shield

From ancient times, the Chinese have been characteristically paranoid about their security. Many years later, the types of attacks to fend off have mutated, but the paranoia remains; and understandably so. With cyber warfare increasingly becoming important, the People’s Liberation Army has inevitably bolstered efforts to fortify its information firewall.
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Posted inConnectivity

Subscribers annoyed with “@Econet Wireless” labelled SMS messages

Starting last week, Econet has been appending the name of the company to some SMS messages sent from the network. It reads “@ Econet Wireless”. Most people we’ve talked to say they started receiving the ‘labelled' SMSes last week on Friday. But that the appended text doesn’t come with every SMS. It’s random.
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Posted inBroadband

What to consider when buying a VSAT based internet service in Zimbabwe

Before fiber came to prominence in Zimbabwe this year, VSAT was how all the bandwidth in Zimbabwe was landed by Internet Access Providers’s . This was done with much larger scale equipment than I mentioned above, think the mazoe earth station if you have seen it. Satellite bandwidth is much more expensive than fiber bandwidth, because of the costs associated with launching and maintaining a satellite in space. The change from satellite bandwidth to fibre is the main reason we have seen Internet connectivity prices come down significantly.
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Entrepreneur Interviews: Lovemore Mukono, co-founder of Mukonitronics (full Interview)

Recently we held an interview with Lovemore Mukono, the co-founder and CEO of Mukonitronics. Mukonitronics is one of Africa’s leading power technology companies in terms of design and manufacturing industrial power electronic products for the local and export market. The range of Mukonitronics products include power electronics for mining, power generation and transmission, electricity distribution, telecommunications, railway and industrial automation.
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Posted inBroadband

“We are targeting at raising our subscriber base to 1 million” says TelOne

Yesterday, a Bulawayo state owned publication, the Chronicle, carried an article about the state owned fixed line operator, TelOne. According to the article, an infrastructure upgrade exercise is underway at TelOne as part of a multi-million dollar deal with Huawei International and Alcatel Lucent. The first phase will be complete this month, the article says, and when all work has been completed, TelOne will have a subscriber capacity of at least a million subscribers.
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