A day without an internet connection does not contribute to the balance sheet of a corporate trying to compete in the global village. No telephone line means no access to international clients.
That’s the nightmare facing Zimbabwean business executives at present. Making international calls is now a luxury enjoyed only by government officials who are guaranteed speedier connections for voice or data calls.
“It’s a disaster,” says Jameson Timba, chief executive of eWorld, a Zimbabwean internet and telecommunications service provider that has been in business for the past 10 years.
Internet subscribers face a torrid time when sending or receiving email. According to Timba, Zimbabwe simply does not have sufficient bandwidth to carry the required volumes of data.
Service providers blame TelOne, the country’s fixed-line network and major supplier of bandwidth, which has acknowledged owing huge debts to South Africa’s Telkom without revealing exact figures.
The situation is not much better for mobile communication. “The current congestion of mobile networks is a function of a growth in subscriber numbers which is not matched by network expansion,” says Timba.
TelOne officials blame the network’s problems on shortages of foreign currency. The network is hunting for foreign currency, financing commercial farmers for horticultural and tobacco exports to raise foreign currency.
“A vibrant telecommunications infrastructure is an incentive for foreign direct investment,” Timba says, adding that “any measures to attract foreign investment which ignores the plight of the telecommunications industry is an exercise in futility”.
Mobile network companies are also constrained by the shortage of foreign currency. Also, the country’s telecommunications regulator has forced these companies to adopt unviable international tariffs. In response, the companies have stopped handling international calls.
Though among the more modest of the difficulties now experienced in Zimbabwe, such telecommunications troubles reduce business efficiency, which in turn worsens the sky-high inflation rate, says John Robertson, an economic consultant.
Yearly inflation leapt to a record 1 593,6% in January, showing no respite in a crisis marked by chronic shortages of foreign exchange, food and fuel and unemployment of more than 80%.