In Zimbabwe, we are all quite used to the fact that prices never god down. Even this year’s Black Friday event was mostly just a scam. Most businesses had fake reductions where things were sold at their everyday prices while the businesses claimed these were sales. A 0% price reduction does not a sale make. Anyway, what we hadn’t seen in a while were the now frequent price hikes we are now seeing. All the major network operators including Econet, Telecel and NetOne hiked their voice, data and SMS bundle prices last month. Now they are doing it again this month. NetOne has already hiked the prices of its bundles and Econet will do the same on the 8th of this month.

Econet recently send an SMS to its subscribers informing them of the impending hike:

Dear Customer,
Kindly take note of our new Voice, Data and SMS promitonal bundle prices effective 8 December
Visit https://www.econet.co..zw/services/bundles
The not so kind SMS from Econet

We haven’t heard from the smallest operator Telecel yet but we expect nothing but the same. After all, Zimbabwe’s mobile network operators do not compete in price terms choosing instead to charge almost uniform prices. Besides POTRAZ their regulatory authority is the one that has to approve all these hikes. In most cases, the operators present a united front. Again you can blame the rise in both the official and unofficial rates for this change in prices.