If you are in Zimbabwe you use or have at least have heard of Zimbabwe Online (ZOL)-after all, they are the country’s largest internet service provider. Personally, I have been a ZOL customer since 2008 and it is easy to see why they are in the lead despite a couple of snafus along the way. Some years back they solidified their position when they were acquired by Liquid Telecoms (now Liquid Intelligent Technologies). While they kept the name ZOL it seems that is about to change. Starting this coming March, ZOL will now be known as Liquid Home (there will probably be a Zimbabwe somewhere in there).

Please be advised that Zimbabwe Online (Private) Limited (“ZOL Zimbabwe”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liquid Intelligent Technologies Zimbabwe (formerly Liquid Telecom Zimbabwe) will be going through an internal re-organisation exercise which will result in the transfer of all existing telecommunications services to its parent company Liquid Intelligent Technologies Zimbabwe.

…With effect from 1 March 2022, your account with ZOL Zimbabwe will be transferred to Liquid Home on the same terms and conditions as your existing contract to ensure there are no disruptions to the services provided. Liquid Home is a sub-brand of Liquid Intelligent Technologies Zimbabwe.
Part of the message from ZOL’s message to clients

A regional exercise

Here is something you probably didn’t know, the bulk of people in Sub-Saharan Africa connect to the internet through Liquid (the owners of ZOL). They happen to have the most extensive terrestrial fibre across Africa. It doesn’t matter who your ISP is chances are you are going through Liquid’s fibre at some point sooner or later. Liquid is not just a behind the scenes company either as already evidenced by their stake in ZOL. In fact, they replicated their ZOL strategy in other countries by either setting up or more often than not, acquiring ISPs and Internet Access Providers in various countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

For a long time, each of these acquisitions kept their own name and branding with companies like Hai and Neotel and so on doing their own thing. Now it seems Liquid is keen to change all that so this name change is not going to be just a Zimbabwean or ZOL thing either. It’s going to be a regional exercise with several companies taking up the Liquid Home brand.

There is a method to that madness too. Big company means synergy. To demonstrate this you have to look at ZOLSPOTs. Instead of having a tourist or traveller buy a ZOLSpot voucher when they land in Zimbabwe when coming from another African country they can just connect to a ZOLSpot via their Liquid Home credentials from their home account. In a case like this it would make little sense to keep calling them ZOLSpots since they are more than that that is why they are now AfricaHubSpots. More synergy can be achieved by combining resources like this. You can even have a single data centre servicing several countries instead of having a data centre in each country. That’s persuasive economies of scale.

No need to change you account

There will be no need to sign up again. All active accounts will be transferred from ZOL to Liquid Home. You might get a communication if you are a ZOL customer that will help you with the transition but don’t expect complications as this is just rebranding-technically it’s more than that but from your point of view there is really going to be little that is going to change except maybe some administration stuff if you are a corporate client.

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