Econet lays the foundation for ICT development
MISA-Zimbabwe welcomes the announcement by Zimbabwe’s largest mobile phone services provider Econet Wireless of its advanced plans to link the country with the rest of the world through a fiber optic cable through the Zambian capital of Lusaka.

This upgrade in Econet’s infrastructure will greatly improve the mobile providers’ data, video and voice connections. The services will be transferred at a faster speed amounting to several gigabytes per second and will benefit the whole telecommunications sector as they will be able to use the infrastructure at much cheaper rates. Currently, the mobile phone service providers transmit data using satellite through base stations, which is considerably expensive.
 
At the same time, the country’s second largest mobile services provider in terms of subscribers, Telecel was recently granted a Third Generation (3G)  operating licence by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulations Authority (POTRAZ).
3G is a third generation of mobile telecommunications technology that supports more diverse applications such as wide area wireless voice telephony, video calls and broadband wireless data. 3G is a follow up to two earlier generations. The first generation began in the early 1980s with the commercial deployment of Advanced Mobile Phone Service cellular networks.  The second was in 1990 when mobile operators deployed two competing digital voice standards.

The launching of 3G services by Telecel will go a long way in improving internet access to the general populace on mobile phones and computers alike. Competition between Econet and Telecel in offering 3G services will potentially mean lower costs for the public and increased accessibility of the service country wide.  Currently, the few subscribers on 3G are in the country’s capital city, Harare, and pay a monthly subscription fee of US$25. This is steep when compared to neighbouring South Africa where one can use their mobile phones to surf the Internet at approximately R10 an hour.
 
MISA-Zimbabwe welcomes these developments in the telecommunications sector given that Zimbabwe continues to lag behind in information communications technological advancement, which, like every other sector has suffered from the political and socio-economic instability of the past years. Presently, Zimbabwe has one of the least cellphone subscribers who are on the 3G platform in southern Africa. Thus, the allocation of frequencies for 3G services to mobile phone service providers by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).
However, it is MISA-Zimbabwe’s position that the envisaged media law reforms should also take into account the telecommunications sector and ensure that it is regulated by an independent board that would be insulated from political interference in the development of the ICTs. //End//
 
Reagan Malumo
Programme Officer: Media Freedom Monitoring and Research
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Secretariat
21 Johann Albrecht St
Private Bag 13386
Windhoek
Namibia
Phone: +264 61 232 975
Fax: +264 61 248 016
Mobile: +264 81 311 2626

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