Cost of making a call must go down

An information communication technology (ICT) revolution is sweeping across Africa and Zimbabwe will not be spared.

Depending on your disposition, the ICT revolution is either a glorious opportunity or a devastating threat. Whatever the case, here is the bottom line: this revolution will directly affect your life in many profound ways.

Already, we can see how technology is throwing up surprises in the telecoms sector. The three established cellphone network operators â€" Econet, NetOne and Telecel â€" are likely to see a decline in their voice call revenues. Cheaper ways of making a phone call are emerging almost daily. These days, companies such as Africom and Brodacom are offering unlimited voice calls for a whole month for as low as $10.

How does that compare with networks that are still charging up to 20 cents per minute?

In any event, tech-savvy Zimbabweans who embraced Voice Over Internet Protocol (Voip) a long time ago know the benefits of technology. With the proper cellphone handset and a few clever software applications, the cost of a voice call can be whittled down to almost zero.

There is a glut of free software on the internet which converts any net-ready cellphone into a powerful communication tool. As any teenager would know, voice messaging, for instance, is already available for free via the countless messaging applications which can be accessed at the click of a button and at no cost.

Statistics show that smartphone sales are increasing at a brisk pace. This has ramifications for the established cellphone networks. The upside for the three networks is that a smartphone is likely to enable a consumer to spend more money on cellular services. This would perhaps boost revenue.

The downside is that a smartphone also enables a consumer to easily access free software on the internet which converts the handset into a powerful multi-media tool. As any teenager in this country will tell you, there is a glut of free cross-platform applications which enable the user to send and receive text, voice and video messages at absolutely no cost.

There are several lessons for the established cellphone networks. The first one is that these companies must drastically lower the cost of a voice call if they entertain any hopes of retaining their voice-call revenues.

The cost of making a call in Zimbabwe is too high. The established cellphone networks often argue that their call charges are determined by the huge expenses associated with maintaining extensive base stations and other vital infrastructure. Well, that may be so, but the fact remains that their voice-call receipts are dwindling fast. As a matter of survival, the networks must simply lower the cost of voice calls or else they will soon go bust.

The second lesson for the established networks is this: innovate or die. It may sound like a cliché but the brutal truth is that there is no substitute for innovation and dynamism.

The teenagers and young adults who have created a parallel platform for sending free text messages to each other outside the established networks is enough proof that the ground is shifting.

But the established cellphone networks are not the only companies affected by the ICT revolution.

Newspaper companies are also feeling the heat. The nightmare currently giving publishers sleepless nights is this: the circulation figures of most newspapers are either stagnant or declining, yet all the publications are recording brisk traffic on their websites. An increasing number of Zimbabweans would rather read their newspapers on the internet than buy a copy on the streets.

Google has reported that four out of the 10 most popular searches by Zimbabweans on the world's largest search engine in 2011 were news-related. What this tells us is that there is potentially a big, untapped market out there in cyberspace.
Newspaper companies in Zimbabwe are yet to find the formula for making money from their websites.

A newspaper website can be visited by hundreds of thousands of readers a month but if the publisher has no strategy for transforming these numbers into dollars, the company will continue singing the blues.
Zimbabwe's business landscape is littered with the carcasses of dinosaurs.

Many of these companies are now attributing their woes to the credit crunch, yet in reality they have perished because of the failure to grasp the imperatives of new technology. But embracing technology for technology's sake is not the answer. African communities must develop their own homegrown solutions. And internet-related innovation should contribute to socio-economic development.

We need to see more homegrown technological innovations that, for instance, empower the tobacco farmer with useful information on the weather, fertiliser use, pest control, harvesting and marketing of produce at next to zero cost.

We have to see local technological innovations that enable budding entrepreneurs to tap into the vast knowledge of experienced executives. The growing economic, social and technological role of information is so profound that no society can downplay or stop it.