Yesterday NetOne announced its own tariff hike which saw them increasing tariffs by just under 100%. This will see NetOne subscribers paying $0.95 per minute to make NetOne to NetOne calls and $0.92 to make offnet calls to other numbers.

This strange pricing structure mirrors that of Telecel who yesterday announced a similar structure where it’s more expensive to make on-net calls i.e. calls to numbers on the same network and cheaper to make calls to other networks.

We cannot fathom the logic behind this. Usually, you want people to make calls to numbers on your own network. That means you get to keep all the dough and don’t have to share with the other network which you have to pay termination fees every time your subscribers call that network.

It could be that both Telecel and NetOne, which are both owned by the Zimbabwean government recognise the fact that Econet has the most subscribers and want to tap into that market somehow. If its cheaper to make calls to these numbers people will buy NetOne/Telecel lines and start calling Econet numbers with them, thus in effect joining the NetOne/Telecel family? If that’s the logic I think it will be too clever for most people and will probably fail.

Out of bundle pricing

If you are one of those foolish enough to browse outside bundles you would be happy to know that the tariffs have been hiked to $0.19 per MB. This means you can waste more of your money. If you like saving money just dial *130# and disable out of bundle browsing like a normal person-forget it even exists.

For those who are into SMS the price has been hiked to $0.24 per local SMS and $1.74 for international SMS-in case you want to talk to your aunt in the UK via SMS, apparently some people still do that.