Zimbabwean Network Expanding Network Coverage

Engineers and technicians from Chinese telecoms equipment maker ZTE Corporation will soon descend on Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo to start work on the next phase of a major expansion by Econet to increase subscriber capacity to over 1.2 million by the end of the year.

The Chinese company, which together with Swedish telecoms equipment giant, Ericssons, have been awarded multi-billion dollar contracts (that's Zimbabwean dollars!) to supply equipment for the expansion, will build base stations covering Bulawayo, Masvingo province, the Midlands and the two Matabeleland provinces. ZTE, who will be based in Bulawayo, will also build new sites in the remote rural areas as well as along the national highways.

This is the first time that Econet has contracted ZTE to build its base stations and marks the third phase of an ongoing expansion program that Zimbabwe's largest mobile network operator started nearly two years ago and has progressively increased network capacity from 500,000 a year ago to 850,000 as of February this year, rising to 1.2 million by the end of 2007.

Meanwhile a separate contract was awarded to Ericssons the giant Swedish firm to supply equipment for switches, Intelligent Network platforms, prepaid systems, as well as new base stations in Harare, Mashonaland and Manicaland.

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe CEO Mr. Douglas Mboweni said that splitting the contracts into two was in line with the company's group policy in other countries. The same policy has been used in Nigeria, Lesotho, and Burundi.

The Econet CEO reaffirmed his company's commitment to help develop Bulawayo.

"The days when Bulawayo was just a sales center are over. Our plan is to decentralise more and more activities to the city. We plan to manage everything south of Kwekwe from Bulawayo," he said."

Posted to the site on 4th May 2007