TelOne debt triggers internet chaos in Zimbabwe

TelOne debt triggers internet chaos in Zimbabwe

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By Staff Reporter

THE Independent Internet Service Providers Association apologised to customers for a drastic reduction in browsing speeds and long delays in e-mail deliveries Monday.

It said Zimbabwe's biggest international link through Intelsat, controlled by the state communications company, TelOne, was shut down until debts of at least $700,000 in service charges were paid off.

The Internet association said the country's main service providers reported a drop of up to 90 percent in the volume of electronic traffic in the past week because of the Intelsat shutdown.

The state company TelOne acknowledged receiving a final demand for payment of its satellite arrears last month and asked the central bank to provide hard currency which has so far not been allocated.

"This is catastrophic as all legal Internet Service Providers utilize TelOne for their outgoing bandwidth to the World Wide Web as well as for e-mail traffic. Thus all such ISPs have and are being affected by this downtime.

"In short, this ... is causing an almost collapse of the Internet in Zimbabwe," said Mweb, the country's biggest provider, in a circular to subscribers.

Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and essential imports. Official annual inflation is a record 1,204 percent, the highest in the world. - AP
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