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Telecel subscribers top 2m

Telecommunications
Telecel Zimbabwe says the number of its active subscribers has shot up by 500 000 since December last year to reach the two million mark. The company’s chief commercial officer Ashraf Elguindy announced the new milestone at Telecel’s Corporate Golf Day last Friday. Last month, former Telecel chief executive John Swaim predicted the number of […]

Telecel Zimbabwe says the number of its active subscribers has shot up by 500 000 since December last year to reach the two million mark.

The company’s chief commercial officer Ashraf Elguindy announced the new milestone at Telecel’s Corporate Golf Day last Friday.

Last month, former Telecel chief executive John Swaim predicted the number of subscribers, which stood at 1,8 million at the end of March, would reach two million this month.

Briefing guests on products and services available to Telecel customers, Elguindy highlighted the introduction of data bundles and the reduction in the cost of these bundles to as little as $2,50 for 55 megabytes.

“The last two years or so have been an exciting period for Telecel,” Elguindy said.

“We have led the way within the mobile telecommunications sector in reducing costs and making mobile communications affordable for everyone.

“The number of subscribers we have has soared to the present level of two million and continues to grow.

“The quality of our voice communications is, we believe, the best in the country.”

Elguindy said his company was the first to introduce Tele-Tunes, a service that allows subscribers to substitute a tune or song of their choice for the ringing tone that callers hear when they phone them.

The service has since proved popular. He said Telecel’s Mega Juice Card offered subscribers a 100% bonus on recharge with the $1 card used in making calls to any Telecel customer and the 50 cents emergency credit that offers regular subscribers who run out of airtime, but still need to make a call.

Elguindy added that Telecel continued to expand its network and installing new base stations to extend its reach geographically and to increase the capacity of areas where the network was well established, and where the demand for Telecel’s services, both voice and data, continued to grow.

“We have also been able to benefit from being part of the Orascom Telecom group and from Orascom’s new status as a subsidiary of an even larger telecommunications group, VimpelCom,” he said.

VimpelCom is the sixth largest telecommunications operator in the world.

He said the appointment of Francis Mawindi as new chief executive officer was expected to benefit Telecel greatly, given his extensive experience in telecommunications in the Americas, where he had been the France Telecom Orange head of business operations for global services in both North and Latin America.