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Telecoms operator Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited has increased its various service charges.

According to the company’s latest revised table reflecting the new tarrifs, for voice calls Econet is now charging RTGS$0.0036 per second which translates to around RTGS$0.23 per minute.

The charges are up from RTGS$0.1600 per minute and RTGS$0.0027 per second. Local short message service (SMS) will now be going for RTGS$0.0634 up from RTGS$0.0530 per SMS.

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Econet has split its billing structure into per second billing and per minute billing, at least according to the latest tariff advice. It is not yet clear, however if customers will have the option to choose what they want, whether to be billed per minute or per second.

It is still not clear whether Econet received authorisation from the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) to increase the tariffs.

As recently as last week POTRAZ director general Dr Gift Machengete said the Authority had not approved any local tariff increases for voice and internet as well as data services.

“We have not approved any local tariff increases; we are still looking at the matter. We have received applications but have not approved any at the moment. We now have a board after six months without one and this is one of the issues the book will look at,” said the POTRAZ boss.

He said a review of tariffs would factor in the economic environment the sector operates.

Last month, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor announced the introduction of a inter-bank foreign exchange market that would counter the illegal forex market that had emerged over the past months.
In doing that he introduced the ‘RTGS dollar’ as the surrogate local currency, but the RTGS dollar has weakened against the United States dollar in recent weeks.

Yesterday the RTGS dollar was trading at 3,0013 to the US dollar, from the initial rate of 2,5 when the inter-bank market commenced trading.

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