Econet partners Ericsson to upgrade network, to improve and introduce new services like VoLTE
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Loading... - Cecilia Were
- 04 Apr 2023
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Econet Wireless is the largest mobile network operator in Zimbabwe. One has to do something right to get to that position and for stretches, Econet was the obvious choice for Zimbabweans. However, lately, serving their almost 10 million active customers has been a challenge.
Last month, in February, Econet data services went down and Econet said that was due to their Core Network suffering degradation in processing data connections. It wasn’t the first time that happened.
From Econet’s latest trading report, we found out that there is overdue maintenance on that core network and other equipment. The forex challenges the country is facing have made it difficult for Econet to maintain its network, resulting in the terrible service that customers have been getting for some time now.
It appears Econet is hard at work to rectify that. They have partnered with Ericsson to modernise their network infrastructure. Could this mean they have secured the forex that’s going to be needed to engage Ericsson? We hope so.
Network upgrades
Ericsson will help Econet upgrade its Radio Access Network (RAN) and mobile Core network. Maybe after these upgrades, we won’t get the “our Core Network suffered degradations” stories.
Apparently, these upgrades will also help Econet “deliver 5G to more locations.” I don’t know what they mean by ‘more locations’ because we don’t seem to be getting 5G anywhere in the country at the moment. I check this myself as well every time I pass by their publicised 5G locations. Ain’t nothing doing.
So maybe we are merely talking about the upgrades improving Econet’s capacity to deliver 5G. Not necessarily that it will mean more 5G for the masses in the near future.
In any case, my excitement for 5G is not that high, the tech is still in its teething phase and what we really need in Zimbabwe right now is 4G that we can count on. That would be more than enough. I’m not alone in thinking we should bench 5G for now and concentrate on 4G. Read More…
