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Tonderai Rutsito Tech Spot
TelOne new billing system has raised the ire of some of their customers most of whom had been used to getting more internet access beyond what they had paid for.

Insiders said the move by the telecoms company, which recently doubled its access speeds, was meant to address serious revenue leakages caused by the old system.

“The old system billed users per capacity of data used charged on the basis of calendar days meaning a client would continuously use the data even after hitting the data cap and the system would disconnect after calendar days have been reached,” said one of the insiders.

The new system powered by Huawei is now based on usage resulting in the outcry of its clients who now feel that they being overcharged by TelOne.

However TelOne believes that the new system is beneficial to its clients as internet access speeds have doubled

“Access speeds across our packages have almost doubled and we are seeing tremendous improvement on data transfer and our clients have been experiencing these changes for the past three weeks as we seek to offer the best service provision”, said Telone

TelOne said that they have done enough tests to make sure that it is properly billing to give a correct reflection.

This has also resulted in faster rates, which naturally means data speeds have increased hence bandwidth usage will be significantly faster.

Their facebook page has been bombarded by complaints of customers who are failing to understand the transition.

A culture shift from the timeline based billing system will be a major challenge for TelOne as their clients are not going to easily accept the new billing system.

To its credit TelOne has introduced bonus promotion for the next three months which will give clients double data for whatever package they purchase as a way of cushioning them from the changes as they prepare them for the new system.

The system notifies the client that he/she has already used up their initial data purchased and they are now using the bonus data, and TelOne hopes this will install a new behaviour data usage change amongst their clients.

One way that customers can maximise their usage is to ensure that they switch off software that consumes a lot of data on mobile phones.

Apple, Android and Windows devices are designed to automatically download data on the back ground to update their software programs to keep them secure or avail the most recent features to the user.

These are settings which the user should manually adjust so that they do not waste the useful data on application or software updates that they do not necessarily need

By simply turning off services like background updates and location service which continuously updates Google servers and other third party software on your new location, one can save more than 75 percent of total usage.

Windows has automatic updates which takes up quite a chunk of gigabytes and it is best to keep it switched off.

Besides data usages, on mobile devices these services are the top most power consuming services which drains your battery by 50 percent so it comes as a bonus to simply switch them off when you don’t want to use them.

An insider divulged that the new system has resulted in them collecting their monthly revenue in only two weeks since its installation and they foresee better returns in the long run.

• The writer is the editor for TechnoMag ,Zimbabwe`s Premiere Technology Magazine, More In full videos from www.technomag.co.zw follow us on our social platforms Twitter: @TechnoMagZw, Facebook: www.facebook.com/technomagzw