The Internet At Work Sucks, But The Alternatives Aren’t Any Better

I work around Avenues in Harare and the internet is awful. We use TelOne ADSL that gives a paltry 5Mbps between 10 people costing us $90/month for unlimited. We got away with $40/month before but TelOne decided to raise their prices so here we are. Sadly, as bad as TelOne is, the alternatives aren’t much better.

• TelOne’s LTE doesn’t cover the office and the only fiber they offer costs $200/Mbps.
• Econet, which we spend $300/month on, asks for $80 for just 50GB. But it is very fast.
• ZOL’s LTE is congested and they want $2,000$1,000 to lay the fiber cable. After that it’s $420$216/month as their quoted exchange rate is probably illegal.
• Utande’s LTE doesn’t reach us. Props to the guy for trying to smoothen the blow of the $3K installation cost, but it turned out that it would actually cost double and that it wasn’t possible since it goes over a road. Shame really since their monthly service was reasonable at $150 a month.
• PowerTel has a modest installation fee of $300 but they require $600 a month for service.
• Telco seemed promising with an installation cost of $200/month. Thing is, they’re speeds are nonsensical. What use is 1Mbps at peak time? They’re better plans would cost $270/month. I would go with this, but it’s hard to get this company to spend money on things that would help and they don’t want to lose the aforementioned Econet bundles.

Honestly I Give Up

I doubt things in Zim will ever get cheaper. Infrastructure is poor and there’s no money to upgrade it so they all have to pay up just to keep the lights on. The government also needs money to operate and given a low tax base, it needs to scalp wherever it can. Even so, Zimbabwe is underpopulated and you have places where there are few wealthy people who live spread out and many poor people who cluster together. The solution would be to densify cities, but the few rich people don’t want that and I doubt city councils even care to address this even if it would fix so many service delivery problems.

Apparently Starlink is approved in Zimbabwe so that might be better, but it’ll probably be far more expensive once it gets in Zim.

Hold Up Never Mind

I shared my findings at work and the founder suggested I talk to someone in their network. They got a revised quote for ZOL which was half of what I got since it turned out the connection point was closer. The person is looking at other quotes and will get back to me. Still, I’m not optimistic about things.

What’s Changed in June 2024

So Starlink is approved now rather suspiciously. It’s coming in Q3 and they aim to be $100/month max. I hope this forces out local Telcos to try and become more competitive since they are completley trash and deserve to go out of business. An updated summary:

• ZOL are happy to charge $455/month for business LTE that’s 10Mbps max.
• As bad as that is, Telco have unlimited packages going for $600/month at 8Mbps!
• Utande LTE is oversubscribed and fiber is too far away.
• Econet is still the fastest though replacing telco would cost $700/month. I heard of 5G bundles but those are nowhere to be found.
• TelOne has no LTE where we are nor Fiber and the ADSL broke and they didn’t pick up the support line.

Complete and utter garbage. If you’re lucky you can get less obscenley packaged internet but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Also, whenever PORTRAZ opens their mouths, it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about, making excuses for the shit internet, lying at how much it costs and being utterly incapable for supporting the telco industry.

Utterly useless country.