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Tonderai Rutsito
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has in recent weeks attracted the ire of its customers due to the new expensive Whatsapp, Facebook and the Opera mini bundles.

The new bundles which were subtly introduced hidden under the veil of light and heavy packages have seen rates more than treble.

Econet was the first to introduce WhatsApp, Facebook and Opera mini bundles all at only 30 cents daily bundles and $3 for the whole month. It seems Econet got more than what they bargained for and one year three months later they want to reverse everything.

Last week Econet cancelled the deal and introduced some limits to the data which the subscriber can push on their social network bundles on the same old rates and they called these WhatsApp light package bundles. They also unveiled much more expensive ones with higher limits and these were called the WhatsApp extra packages for heavy users with 500MB limits.

While Econet has been bearing the brunt of their action I believe the latest move is for a good cause.

The logic behind Econet’s move is obvious, there is too much data being pushed on WhatsApp, Facebook and the Opera mini bundles.

The honest truth is most Zimbabweans had already given up on the bundles, even before the new rates were introduced. It was taking ages to send and receive multimedia on their platform completely defeating the whole purpose of the bundles in the first place. To many subscribers, they would consider themselves lucky to get images or videos moving, as it would take hours at times before they get to push the data.

In simple terms, the platform was now overwhelmed, a major shift from their initial unlimited data which had attracted millions.

Econet had a real problem to address and I respect them for coming out to fix to this problem.

It does not serve any purpose to have cheap access while the major point of communication is not being achieved. This, of course, is one main advantage which to date Econet has used. It is a well-known fact that Econet has functional products and this has gained them serious market confidence.

What good are the cheap promotions when you can’t communicate at all? Instead of sending and receiving the same videos and pictures a million times around, now users will simply need to think twice before downloading if they really need to see that clip, or maybe they have already seen it already.

We are likely seeing millions changing policy on audio downloads too as one will find unsolicited images and videos bombarding their storage.

This will in turn also bring sanity to the instant messaging as groups and groups never cease to send the same old stuff.

At least subscribers are now asking themselves whether it is really worth spreading or downloading that picture, just before they hit the send button.

Besides some form of quality control on the messaging app, WhatsApp and Facebook always reduces and compresses the actual video and image size to a compatible mobile size which greatly saves on bandwidth thus less cost.

On Opera mini, I still need to be enlightened why Econet would want to limit data on their unlimited browsing platform which is already compressing data by 90 percent with no downloads.

The subscriber has every reason to complain, at face value, about the latest development while a close look into the development may be good news we all should be celebrating.

The writer is the Editor of Zimbabwe’s premier technology magazine. More in- depth from www.technomag.co.zw on http://technom.ag/k5. Follow us on Twitter at TechnoMagZw. Follow us on ww.facebook.com/technomagzw