Zimbabwe: Telecel not closing despite network problems
February 7th 2022
State-backed Telecel Zimbabwe has been forced to deny rumours that it is on the brink of closure after service outages affected customers for several days. While subscribers were unable to make calls or access data services earlier this week, Telecel spokesperson Zitha Dube told NewsDay: ‘Telecel is very healthy at the moment, and our licence is still operational. There are no issues concerning debt.’ The firm said the network problems were due to expired software on the main mobile switching controller and the issue has been resolved with support from equipment partner Huawei.
At its peak in 2012 Zimbabwe’s number three operator claimed more than 2.5 million subscriptions, but its user base had dropped to 582,570 by the end of September 2021, giving it less than 5% of the overall market. Similar rumours of closure hit Telecel in early 2020 when the company’s servers went down for several weeks, cutting network availability by up to 65%.
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