Most Econet services were reported to be down much of Saturday in what is suspected to be linked to the ongoing 18 hour loadshedding scheme set up ZESA.

Services including Calling Services, EcoCash, Data/Internet services, USSD services and some apps run by the company were down throughout the day and at the time of writing.

Earlier in the week, mobile operators threatened that they would shut down their services during load shedding.

During load shedding, mobile operators have to keep services running using backup power generators which drastically increase the cost of keeping the network running. The backup generators use fuel which is currently in short supply in the country. The cost of fuel in ZW dollars has increased significantly in the past couple of months.

Mobile operators charge for their services in local ZW dollars, and in recent months, the government has not approved tariff hikes to match the increased costs. This likely means mobile operators are operating at a loss.

Service quality for the 3 main telecoms operators (Econet, NetOne and Telecel) has, therefore, declined severely for the most part of 2019.