Zimpapers Logo

Technomag
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe is pressing ahead with the implementation of latest technology on fast data connectivity despite fears that Zimbabwe is not ready for such advancement. Econet`s chief commercial and customer services officer Mr Stanley Henning said that they will not be slowing down on the 4G and 5G.

This is despite calls that Econet should concentrate of offering full and reliable 3G service because at times the country only have Edge or GPRS for basic connectivity.

Mr Henning said all the main centres in Zimbabwe were already fully covered and enjoying 3G technology while coverage in the remaining areas was being worked on.

“Currently we have slightly over 20 sites already running the Long-Term Evolution, (LTE) and we are about to double the sites to meet customer demand,” he said.

He added that their thrust to implement 4G and 5G was motivated by the need to keep up with new trends in the technology industry.
“The world is already talking about 5G, we need to run 4G first for our Zimbabwean market and then start working towards 5G.” he said.
Officially Econet is not yet rolling out 4G voice in Zimbabwe but just data connectivity. Mr Henning highlighted that the actual speed which their equipment will reach will be 14 megabits per second, although the maximum potential can reach 21mb/s.

When asked about the heavy costs of introducing the new technology, Mr Henning said although costs will be initially high, they had confidence that these will be affordable for the Zimbabwean market and that they will eventually come down as demand picks up.
Econet is taking advantage of their high speed fibre network backbone from their subsidiary, Liquid Telecom.

However a major setback for the LTE or 4G technology has been the bandwidth spectrum. The current high spectrum forces service providers to install many base station to serve the available frequency range, a case which would then make it expensive to cover even smaller areas.
While thee great speeds are highly commendable, Zimbabweans are still yearning for basic internet connectivity even on mobile broadband with some Internet Service Providers being blamed for sleeping on the job, forcing subscribers to endure intermittent internet connectivity.

On the other hand the cost of data access in Zimbabwe is still high, in cases where one gets “unlimited” connectivity, the cost is still an inhibiting factor or the ISP will greatly fine tune speed should you become data hungry, forcing you to slow down on the “Unlimited” package.

The writer is the editor for TechnoMag Zimbabwe`s Premier Technology Magazine, more www.technom.ag/5l or join us on our facebook pagewww.facebook.com/technomagzw Email articles[at]technomag.co.zw tweet @TechnoMagZw