Cell transforms world commercial life

CELLULAR communication has revolutionised commercial and other aspects of life worldwide.

ecocashCELLULAR communication has revolutionised commercial and other aspects of life worldwide.

The massive development of the telecommunications industry in the modern world has fostered breakneck technological changes which were accelerated by the invention of the microchip.

There is no doubt that the telecommunications industry has been on the cutting edge of globalisation efforts to such an extent that the world is virtually a village.

Many people have been asking whether there would be any more technological innovations or inventions beyond the computer-based development in the telecommunications sector.

The answer is a resounding yes because according to scientists the human brain is one of the most untapped resources.

As long as there are problems that are either surfacing for the first time or have metamorphosed from earlier ones, it stands to reason that the human mind will be pushed to the very limits of knowledge in a bid to unpack solutions.

It is common nowadays to hear of plans by SpaceX and Nasa to craft space holidays which are projected to cost millions of greenbacks for the world’s superrich and powerful who are now tired of globetrotting.

Tele-density has improved remarkably over the past 10 years in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, but a lot still needs to be done by way of improving product range and product quality offered by leading telecommunications companies such as Econet, Vodacom, MTN, Celtel, Etisalat, Airtel and Globacom, to mention a few players in Africa.

Basic communication in much of Zimbabwe is now being enjoyed by the majority of the population including those in rural areas. Nevertheless, data services are still very expensive in Zimbabwe when compared to other countries in the region such as Kenya and Tanzania.

Massive investment in optic fibre technology by companies such as Powertel and Econet (or Liquid Telecom) has dramatically improved Internet connectivity and ushered the Zimbabwean tech-savvy community into the world of broadband computing especially in major urban centres such as Bulawayo and Harare.

A number of studies and surveys have, however, demonstrated that service depth tends to be shallow in remote rural markets with a very low share in per capita national income (gross domestic product per capita).

It is in this vein that people in most remote rural communities are yet to enjoy the wonderful possibilities of life facilitated by internet computing and instant messaging through platforms such as WhatsApp.

In the past five years, Zimbabwe belatedly witnessed the interfacing of electronic services with banking or finance through a phenomenon called electronic banking (or e-banking).

As is usually the case, the trendsetter and pathfinder in e-banking technology has been Econet maybe because of its virtual monopoly status in the Zimbabwean cellular communications industry.

EcoCash is now a product with international acclaim and is competing with established products such as M-Pesa of Kenya and Tanzania in terms of news coverage in the blogosphere.

Econet even strategically acquired former TN Bank, now called Steward Bank, to facilitate the rolling out of the EcoCash and other products with a mobile banking edge.

Industry watchers are predicting that within the next 10 years most African economies like their Western and Asian counterparts would have become cashlite.

The general feeling among practitioners in the banking and finance industries is that innovations in the telecommunications sector are so disruptive that much of conventional banking as we know it would become a thing of the past.

Already in most Swedish cities the proportion of Internet and mobile banking transactions has multiplied tremendously over the past four years to such an extent that more than 70% of the public in that country conduct their transactions using cellular phone and Internet platforms.

Firms such as NetOne and Telecel in Zimbabwe still need to improve the reliability of their services. In the past two months NetOne has had debilitating breakdowns in their services which occurred during working hours without prior notice of any upgrade or any project being undertaken.

This obviously disrupts the economy so much as modern nearly instantaneous communication has become the mainstay of business activities.

In this regard, telecommunications companies need to proactively invest a lot of capital on a continuous basis to improve their network infrastructure and topography.

Ian Ndlovu is an economist based at the National University of Science and Technology skilled in data analysis using SPSS, Gretl, Stata, Eviews and Microsoft Excel software packages. His research interests cover business, development, economic and e-commerce issues.

He writes in his personal capacity.