Zimbabwe’s international satellite link has been cut off after the national telephone company failed to pay a $710 000 debt in a move that experts warn could spell the collapse of the internet in the country, reports said on Thursday.
The managing director of Tel-One, the country’s sole fixed-line phone company, told the state-controlled Herald newspaper that the company had been disconnected from the key Intelsat link.
Wellington Makamure was quoted as saying Tel-One had applied to the country’s central bank for critically scarce hard currency to pay the fee.
”[The] Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has promised to look positively at our plea,” he said.
He added that Tel-One was rerouting Zimbabwe’s internet traffic through other means, resulting in a service slowdown. There are about 500 000 internet users in the country of 11,6-million people.
Over the past few weeks, internet speeds have been very slow in Zimbabwe and some websites, especially those based in neighbouring South Africa, have been inaccessible.
President Robert Mugabes government tightly controls internet use, and almost all internet traffic is forced to pass through Tel- One.
Zimbabwe Online, one of the country’s major internet service providers, said in a statement this week that the cutting-off of the international satellite link was causing near-complete collapse of internet in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is in its sixth year of economic recession, marked by inflation of more than 1 200%, acute shortages of foreign currency, fuel and medicines, as well as spiralling poverty and social hardships.
Critics blame the economic crisis on President Robert Mugabe’s controversial policies, including a six-year old programme of white farm seizures, which has cut agricultural production in this once-prosperous Southern African nation.
Farm takeovers are reported to have accelerated in the last two weeks, with reports on Wednesday that another two white farming families had been forced off their farms near the eastern border city of Mutare. — Sapa-dpa