Econet Wireless has attributed the challenges experienced across its network on Monday to serious network fault in Masvingo.
In a statement released last night, the mobile giant said the fault initially resulted in call failures in the Masvingo region only, but later escalated to a nation-wide problem following an abnormal surge in traffic, which led to instability on its key network systems.
“The instability on our key network systems resulted in intermittent failure by customers to make calls, send SMSes (messages), browse mobile data or to use USSD for services such as EcoCash and to purchase product bundles across the network,” the company said.
Econet controls 65 percent of the country’s data traffic market share and a further 97 percent market share in the mobile money market share.
“Mobile financial services transactional activities went up by 145 percent to US$44 billion from US$18 billion, while volumes increased by 121 percent to 1,7 billion from 755 million in 2017,” the firm said.
The company said while its network systems and infrastructure included redundancy (or back-up systems) the current foreign currency shortages in Zimbabwe made it difficult for the network to support its systems “to levels which cater for unusual challenges”.
“We are confident of our back-up systems, but access to foreign currency would certainly enhance the robustness of these systems,” the company said. The company regretted the inconvenience the network challenges caused its customers. The Herald
