Econet has sent out the announcement informing the public that Ecocash service has now been fully restored. We can confirm that the service is indeed working as expected after hours of downtime.

Econet was down

Yesterday Econet suffered a blackout that resulted in all its related services such as Ecocash going down with it. People could not make calls, send SMS or access data services.

Ecocash as well as other USSD based services such as checking airtime balance, buying data etc were also not working. Those with portable swipe machines, especially those issued by Steward Bank an affiliate of Econet were also not working.

It was a ZESA issue

According to Econet, there was a power cut at their Network Operating Centre (NOC). This is not unusual as ZESA has been subjecting us to 18-hour load shedding these days.

What was unusual was that the backup generators failed to automatically take over resulting in the NOC losing power. Since it is the heart and brains of the whole system it took everything down with it.

Business comes to a standstill

Given, Zimbabwe’s prevailing cash crisis the majority of transactions tend to be mobile money transactions. Ecocash has a 99% market share when it comes to mobile money. Add in the fact that Econet has the lion share of mobile subscribers this meant there business ground to a halt throughout the country.