Internet service restored after TelOne pays debt

Internet service restored after TelOne pays debt

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By Staff Reporter

INTERNET services in Zimbabwe were restored after fixed telephone service provider TelOne paid its outstanding 700 000 dollar debt to Intelsat, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

“We were bailed out by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe late Friday,” Phil Chingwaru, TelOne spokesman said. “We were given one million US dollars although our bill was only 700 000 dollars.”

Intelsat, the international communication carrier, had cut the state-owned firm from the global gateway for debt arrears.

Although TelOne has settled the Intelsat bill it is still saddled with other debts running into millions of dollars, Chingwaru said.

Also on Tuesday, TelOne's competitors, Econet Wireless, issued an angry statement rejecting media stories that the entire internet service had been affected by TelOne's problems.

A spokesman for Ecoweb, a subsidiary of Econet, said whilst it was true that TelOne was experiencing difficulties with its Internet bandwidth, it is not the only licensed provider of bandwidth in the country.

The spokesman added: “Therefore, it is not true to say that Zimbabwe has been cut off from the Internet at any given time. Ecoweb is a fully licensed provider of Internet bandwidth, and enjoys a larger market share than most of its competitors in the field.

“We have plenty of bandwidth and we have taken up most of the slack created by the problems at TelOne.”

The Ecoweb spokesman said that despite its problems in recent years, Zimbabwe was making good and steady progress in the provision of Internet services. Currently Zimbabwe has one of the highest per capita Internet usages in Africa.

“We all want to see greater progress naturally, but it does not help us to make statements which create an impression that we no longer have Internet simply because one provider has a problem,” said the spokesman.

TelOne, meanwhile, has revealed that it has diversified into horticulture, floriculture and tobacco and expects to earn 12 million dollars from exports.

“We are also expecting another eight million euros from the sale of flowers,” said Phil Chingwaru, the TelOne spokesman.

TelOne firm is reeling under a foreign currency crunch and has asked the government to compel diplomatic missions and Internet service providers to pay their monthly subscriptions in foreign currency, Chingwaru said.

“We have the Zimbabwe dollar component, but what we need is foreign currency,” he said.

The southern African country is in the midst of an economic crisis characterised by four-digit inflation, soaring poverty levels, an unemployment rate hovering at over 70 percent and chronic shortages of fuel and basic goods such as cornmeal. – Staff Reporter/Sapa-AFP.
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