By Oliver Kazunga
The country’s biggest cellular network, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, has increased tariffs for local voice calls to as high as RTGS$2,24 per minute.
The new tariff adjustments come into effect from April 1.
Econet has also separated its billing into per second billing and per minute billing.
In a public notice yesterday, the telecommunications giant indicated that it would now be charging $0,22 per minute ($0,21257).
This effectively means that even if a call does not last a minute, the subscriber would be charged the 22 cents.
If you are on a call and it crosses over into the second minute just by a fraction, you will pay 44 cents.
Econet will also be charging $0,038 per second, which means if a subscriber calls for a minute, a rate of $2.28 will apply.
Meanwhile, major Internet Service providers have pegged their broadband services in United States dollars in response to measures announced in the 2019 Monetary Policy Statement presented in Februray.
In the MPS, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Dr John Mangudya re-introduced the interbank market shifting from the 1:1 rate between the US$ and the RTGS dollar to 1:2,5.
Internet service providers such as Zol Zimbabwe, Liquid Telecom and TelOne have indicated that their rates are indexed in US dollars.
TelOne has indicated that its home basic package costs $15 and RTGS$37 for 10 gigabytes (G) while the infinity pro package for 500 G is going for US$89 and RTGS$222,50.
It’s uncapped package is pegged at US$120 and RTGS$300.
The difference in prices has been drawn from the interbank rates.
Liquid Telecom has said their price alignment will take effect from April 5.
The firm said the pricing of all its products would remain unchanged from the existing US dollar denominated base price when payment is made in US dollars.
However, when the payment is made using the RTGS dollar, the payment will be converted at a rate of 2,5.
Zol Zimbabwe has announced an increase of data prices on all capped packages as of April 1 and this effectively increases price of data per GB.
It also said it has not changed the US dollar “base” of pricing. The Chronicle
