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The Internet At Work Sucks, But The Alternatives Aren’t Any Better

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Updates

  • These notes are excessive. I should rewrite this damn article. In the meantime, read about Starlink which is way better.

  • I tried switching to Liquid and it’s even worse, holy shit. It has an aggressive fair use policy even on business packages which caps out to 4Mbps which is utterly useless in an office. I appreciate their responsive support but their LTE package is horrible, don’t use it. Fibre is fine however.

    I’m going to try Starlink now that it’s operating. Also, Telco now has better packages. I can get unlimited 55Mbps for $130 which is what we were paying for 350GB of 10Mbps. I called them and they said they aren’t working yet so why market them?

    I’m also interested in Dark Fibre Africa (DFA). $130 for 50Mbps and $170 for 100Mbps and they also provide networking solutions like Dark Fibre and Layer 2 VPNs and the like. They don’t market much but they’re sales team is pretty good. They’ll also give you references who are happy to share their experience. Setup costs don’t include a router, but they won’t charge thousands of dollars to lay fibre to your location (looking at you Utande). I would like to go with them but my boss insists on Starlink. You can contact the one sales guy Kelvin at [email protected].

    Econet has Smartbiz packages which I once read about but the econet shops never new about when I asked. It starts at $45 for 5Mbps (+$2 to set up) where you get a simcard with unlimited data and well, you get what you pay for. I’ve read some things saying that you’ll be behind a CGNAT which can mess some things up, they may throttle after 200GB and at some point they strongly suggest you get a router after a while.

  • A few days after posting this, Liquid introduced cheaper, faster packages, including business LTE at 20Mbps for $90/month unlimited. I’m trying to push for it at work since it’ll be cheaper than Telco and thrice as fast.
  • I’ve posted some changes as of June 2024

  • Funny how I’m adding a post literally a year after I wrote it since I need to reference it elsewhere.

    The situation isn’t much better especially as Starlink was forced to deactivate terminals in Zimbabwe. I doubt the telcos have any room to expand since they’re riddled with debt so unless a new operator comes or Zimbabwe’s macroeconomic situation changes, nothing will improve. Econet’s 5G bundles seem promising but it needs a $500 “5G router” (that’s currently out of stock everywhere) and they don’t offer it officially yet which is why I linked to a blog post talking about it.

    As for Telco, it sucks but what can I do? Actually learn networking, I suppose.

  • We finally got Telco and we’ve used it for the past few months and while it’s faster, it’s still terrible among 10 users. I guess I’ve gotta start doing QoS management.
  • TelOne eventually got sensible pricing, but we’re gonna give Telco a shot since the revised Liquid Home quote was still expensive. We paid two weeks ago but they haven’t come yet so they have to give us pro rated service. I probably need to look into why the office internet is so bad as well.

NOTE: The dollar prices here are US dollars. The Zimbabwean currency is now Zimbabwe Gold, ZiG.

I work around Avenues in Harare and the internet is awful. We use TelOne ADSL that gives a paltry 5Mbps between 10 people costing us $90/month for unlimited. We got away with $40/month before but TelOne decided to raise their prices so here we are. Sadly, as bad as TelOne is, the alternatives aren’t much better.

  • TelOne’s LTE doesn’t cover the office and the only fiber they offer costs $200/Mbps.
  • Econet, which we spend $300/month on, asks for $80 for just 50GB. But it is very fast.
  • ZOL’s LTE is congested and they want $2,000$1,000 to lay the fiber cable. After that it’s $420$216/month as their quoted exchange rate is probably illegal.
  • Utande’s LTE doesn’t reach us. Props to the guy for trying to smoothen the blow of the $3K installation cost, but it turned out that it would actually cost double and that it wasn’t possible since it goes over a road. Shame really since their monthly service was reasonable at $150 a month.
  • PowerTel has a modest installation fee of $300 but they require $600 a month for service.
  • Telco seemed promising with an installation cost of $200/month. Thing is, they’re speeds are nonsensical. What use is 1Mbps at peak time? They’re better plans would cost $270/month. I would go with this, but it’s hard to get this company to spend money on things that would help and they don’t want to lose the aforementioned Econet bundles.

Honestly I Give Up

I doubt things in Zim will ever get cheaper. Infrastructure is poor and there’s no money to upgrade it so they all have to pay up just to keep the lights on. The government also needs money to operate and given a low tax base, it needs to scalp wherever it can. Even so, Zimbabwe is underpopulated and you have places where there are few wealthy people who live spread out and many poor people who cluster together. The solution would be to densify cities, but the few rich people don’t want that and I doubt city councils even care to address this even if it would fix so many service delivery problems.

Apparently Starlink is approved in Zimbabwe so that might be better, but it’ll probably be far more expensive once it gets in Zim.

Hold Up Never Mind

I shared my findings at work and the founder suggested I talk to someone in their network. They got a revised quote for ZOL which was half of what I got since it turned out the connection point was closer. The person is looking at other quotes and will get back to me. Still, I’m not optimistic about things.

What’s Changed in June 2024

So Starlink is approved now rather suspiciously. It’s coming in Q3 and they aim to be $100/month max. I hope this forces out local Telcos to try and become more competitive since they are completley trash and deserve to go out of business. An updated summary:

  • ZOL are happy to charge $455/month for business LTE that’s 10Mbps max.
  • As bad as that is, Telco have unlimited packages going for $600/month at 8Mbps!
  • Utande LTE is oversubscribed and fiber is too far away.
  • Econet is still the fastest though replacing telco would cost $700/month. I heard of 5G bundles but those are nowhere to be found.
  • TelOne has no LTE where we are nor Fiber and the ADSL broke and they didn’t pick up the support line.

Complete and utter garbage. If you’re lucky you can get less obscenley packaged internet but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Also, whenever PORTRAZ opens their mouths, it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about, making excuses for the shit internet, lying at how much it costs and being utterly incapable for supporting the telco industry.

Utterly useless country.