Telecommunications Arrears Cripple Zimbabwe's Internet Traffic

APA-Harare (Zimbabwe) Zimbabwe has paid part of its arrears for international telecommunications links, ending a week-long disruption to internet traffic that had hurt business and personal communications.

Sources said here Saturday that TelOne, the government-run firm responsible for telecommunications gateway to the rest of the world, had accrued arrears of more than US$1 million on fees to service providers for internet connection, resulting in the country being switched off from the international platform.

This led to problems accessing internet and affected telephone traffic to and from the southern African country since Tuesday.

TelOne made a partial payment of US$200,000 to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) after the intervention of Information, Communication and Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa on Friday.

The payment enabled the resumption of internet communication on Saturday.

This is not the first time Zimbabwe has been switched off from the international telecommunications platform for failure to pay its dues to service providers.

The same thing happened in 2007 when TelOne had accumulated huge arrears to the ITU.

Posted to the site on 15th March 2009