The TelOne campaign is a reaction to a challenge from Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, which this year embarked on a countrywide installation of fibre optic cables, infrastructure that should ideally be provided by TelOne.
Now, TelOne appears determined to eat into the voice market in which Econet, with a subscriber base reportedly now topping four million, is the leader, and knock down prices.
It has unveiled a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless connection under which subscribers can use specially designed mobile phone handsets to communicate from anywhere around the capital.
The catch is the heavily discounted tariffs for TelOne to TelOne calls, a move seen as designed to force most users to join the network, which already had 390 115 lines, mainly to institutions.
“We didn't invent the first phone. We just made it more affordable,” says TelOne in its campaign. “Get connected and talk with Dialone (the landline network unit) at only US$0.15 per three minutes from landline to landline for local calls.”
The campaign certainly comes as a surprise to mobile network operators, who have resisted calls from subscribers for lower tariffs as well as per second billing.
“TelOne wants to demonstrate to the mobile networks that it can break into the mobile voice market just as they have broken into most of what should be its monopoly sphere as a landline operator and provider of the optic fibre backbone,” a telecoms expert noted.
Local mobile calls are charged at US$0.27 per minute, and calls to the same network are being charged at US$0.25 per minute.
This translates to an 80% discount to calls on the same network by TelOne.
