TelOne tariffs an impediment to business development

Staff Reporter 30-05-2009

Huge tariffs being charged by the sole fixed telephone operator are an impediment to business development, analysts have said.

TelOne, like any other service provider was allowed to charge tariffs in hard currency when the economy was liberalized in February this year. However, since then, customers have been receiving huge telephone bills forcing Telone customers to put in place strict phone usage controls.

“How would you explain a bill of up to US$1 000 for a small scale business like ours where we have a workforce of five and have very strict rules on the use of the telephone. It is surprising that TelOne advises customers that it charges less than US$0.23 per three minutes yet we receive such huge bills which means we have been on the phone for more than 12 000 minutes which to me makes no sense."

“I strongly suspect that there is a problem with the billing system at TelOne and it has to be corrected if we are to do business,” said Mr Muzanamombe who has offices in the Harare Central Business District.

To prove that there may be problems with the billing system at TelOne, there are some customers who complained that they were billed in United States dollar for telephone use in January this year. This was a time when all tariffs were charged in Zimbabwean dollars.

It has also been argued that the service provider was slow in attending to faults while connectivity was a nightmare.

An example was given of connectivity problems which are usually faced when using the wireless technology named CDMA. One has to dial as many as five times, even when in the CBD, to get through and there is no guarantee that the conversation will be completed as the connection can be terminated at any time.

TelOne is the country’s sole provider of fixed telephone services and despite years of trying to bring in a new player, it appears customers will have to wait for longer.

Tele Access, one player which was granted a license saw it being withdrawn after it failed to make any meaningful developments towards implementation of a second fixed telephone network.