Econet Wireless — Zimbabwe’s largest mobile network operator based on subscriber numbers — will early next year introduce 3G cellular service for the first time in that country, initially targeting the capital city Harare, the company said in a statement on Friday.
Zimbabwe will join South Africa and Mauritius as the only African countries to roll-out 3G services.
Chief executive officer Douglas Mboweni said Econet had ordered equipment from Swedish telecoms equipment manufacturer Ericsson for an initial capacity of 50 000 lines that target the high-end market, comprising mostly business executives, professionals and senior government officials.
“These lines are in addition to another 300 000 lines for normal cellular service that Econet will start releasing from next month under its current $20-million expansion programme to increase network capacity from 500 000 to 800 000 by year end,” the statement noted.
He said that although 3-G will have a limited coverage initially, the service will allow a customer to roam onto the normal service when there is no coverage for 3G.
“We are only going to have 3G in major cities because the cost of roll-out is very high. This is what is happening in the rest of the world, but when you get out of 3G coverage you can still make normal phone calls. It is not possible to roam from the normal service to 3G.”
Mboweni also said that work on the expansion of the normal cellular service was progressing well and the company had already developed 80 new base station sites which were ready for new equipment to be installed.
The expansion is being financed by a loan from the Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank which gave Econet $20-million for the project.
Econet, which is wholly owned by Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listed Econet Wireless Holdings, is the country’s largest telecommunications company with a subscriber base of nearly 486 000. – I-Net Bridge