One cool feature about smartphones is the hotspot feature. You buy a bundle,, toggle a button on your phone and you are good to go. You can then connect your other devices to the hotspot. You can do this with any bundle so long as your phone is connected to the internet. People usually use the Private WiFi bundles or Netone’s OneFi bundles for this. It’s possible however for a company like Econet to disable you from using your hotspot. Which is what one user claims they are doing on Twitter.

So, @econetzimbabwe has decided to disable people’s gadgets from tethering or using multiple devices on their “wifi bundle” apparently because they want consumers to buy kambudzi mifi at over US$50 which they allow to tether. Truly shameful, criminal and immoral..

Tethering/hotspotting is a standard phone function anywhere, and that @econet_support is preventing this functionality should at least interest regulators at @portraz. This is taking the near monopoly too. We already have too many gadgets, all we need is better service @Techzim.

Journalist Tichaona Zindoga on Twitter

To be clear, Econet has the ability to detect and make tethering harder. They are just not doing it..

“The reports are unfounded and completely untrue. We have not ‘disabled’ customers ability to tether, and we have no capacity to do so. As a digital service provider, we want more customers – not less – to use data and to enjoy our digital services, and therefore we have no interest in stopping people from tethering”

I was able to verify that Econet is not disabling by hotspoting my phone and using their data connection several times. I didn’t need to do anything and the process worked flawlessly.

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