Airtel Zambia has today launched the 3 G powered internet service which will enhance customers’ access to internet facilities at a faster speed.
Airtel has also reduced the bundle rates from K1,100 to K98 per Megabyte as well as increased the validity of the bundles from 30 to 90 days.
Company Managing Director Fayaz King says Airtel is committed to rolling out internet services to the Zambian people at a lower cost.
He said by December 2011, internet penetration in Zambia stood at 6.7 %, noting that the statistics of access to internet facilities in the country have continued to be low despite the country recording an increase in the number of subscribers having access to mobile phone services.
Mr. King says Airtel will continue investing in the services that will cater for the various needs of its clients.
And Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism director of communication Gilbert Maimbo said the third generation powered INTERNET facility will enable citizen have easy access to information.
Mr. Maimbo observed that the improved and affordable INTERNET services will enhance communication systems among the business community and improve efficiency of various institutions in the country.
Mr. Maimbo also commended Airtel for its continued investment into the country’s economy in monetary terms and skills development.
QFM
Congrats Airtel…….we r happy for the development!
Haven’t they already been on 3G? If not what is Edge? Thanks for the cost reduction anyway. It was very prohibitive.
LTE in ten years come one guys this is a joke….
thats great! But then does this also apply to those using the mobile phone as a moderm connected to a laptop??
Total bullshit, they are just thieves so all this reducing of bundle rates is rubbish considering we are talking about airtel…They can’t reduce from K1,100 to K98,it’s not possible cause they’re selfish *****s. Their promotions never work and they keep lying and stealing from people,if it was MTN or ZAMTEL I would have believed not Airtel fools.
I think it is 980 Zkw. K98 is father Christmas price.
Yes it is true. We are already paying K185000 for a 2 gig bundle. This is less than K100 per MB.
We used to pay K850 per MB!!!
Just enjoy the reduction
They have been on 3G for a few months already. Â Maybe the announcement is just to make it official. Â The reduction in tariff is welcome. Â Also the 30 day expiry deadline was nosensical, forcing one to either buy a smaller but costly bundle per MB or risk losing the unused data bundle after 30 days if it was too large.
Please Airtel just make sure that the 3G service is consistently on. Â Why should it vary from E to 2G to 3G and then zero connectivity in one spot in a span of minutes? Â Also why doesn’t Airtel internet work during weekends, thus forcing people to go on internet during week days mainly? Â Also the claimed data speeds never happen; forget watching TouTube or any serious data downloads. Â WE ARE NOW LOOKING TOWARDS 4G AND LTE BEFORE END OF 2012!!!!!
A positivie driection in advocating for net neutrality. Well done…
@DON COLEONE
Boss, by Airtel announcing this, MTN will be forced to respond in kind and equalise tariffs. Â Before this announcement, MTN and Airtel were at par on ZMK/MB oF data on most bundles, except that MTN did not have 6GB and 10GB bundles. MTN and Zamtel will have to respond ASAP.
@ 2 egde is the 2nd generation while 3g is third generation which means max download speed on edge is 128kbps while 3g is anywhere from 258*bps to 4mps + basically you wpnt have to wait for youtube videos to load and you can download a song in about 15secs so you can see alot of blackberry user will be downloading movies ,songs etc. at ease bt. i think mtn has 3g next upgrade is hsdpa
USHITASHA PATUNONO , NAPAFINGI TAKATASHE!!!! bemba proverb
ba pushi after ba panga money.
Just wait for Zamtel to be re-nationalized with old-fashioned price controls put back in place to protect the company.Â
WE DIDN’T BOYCOTT FOR NOTHING, AIRTEL HAS HEARD. I ALMOST BRUSHED THE AIRTEL CARD BUT LATER DECIDED TO KEEP IT IN MY BAG FOR FUTURE USE, NOW I’LL START USING IT. HEY, THE REDUCTION IS UNBELIEVABLE. FROM K1,100 TO K98. NOT UNTIL I PROVE IT, I’LL NOT BELIEVE.
foolish airtel chaps..just capitalists..poor services..
So if they’d still make a profit at K98 per MB, it means these guys have been minting (stealing) from poor people by charging K1,100/MB. Am not impressed. MTN iliche!
dont believe lies from those idots.they have been singing alot of fake promises while stealing from us.o dont see the reduction implemented,its one of those announcements made to rig us of our money.
I will not go back to these thieves (Airtel), they have lost a lot of customers because of poor network services and they are the most expensive mobile provider in zambia. Wish you luck!!!
Is it to K98 or K980? Do not celebrate too fast.
I don’t like FAYAZ, this clan are a bunch of thieves, thats why they want to attack Zambia over Zamtel.
Are there no Zambians who can provide the simple Internet technology? Kaunda left us with pretty of towers in all districts, its a matter of installing panels there and all Zambian will have cheapest-fastest internet. I could have done this projects, but I am busy in my field of philosophy, which doesn’t pay well anyway, but money is cheaper than thoughts.
The experience as a service provider with Airtel is just exploitative as the colonialists. This is an institution that needs to be repossessed because of shoddy services that boarder on robbing Zambians. They subject customers to their commercial adverts, take up topups without consent and even posted campaign adverts for RB in the last elections. We would want PF govt to re assess how they got a licence for this business. Zambia Telecomms Authority is aware of numerous complaints against Airtel and have kept a low profile. A collegue (former Director in Zamtel) put it ‘There is something wrong going on between ZTA and Airtel. He was right and need looking at Airtel’s conduct on exploitation of Zambians by this Company.
I have been paying less than K100/MB for over 1 year now, on Zain/Airtel. Here is the math. A 2 gig bundle costs K185000. This is K185000 div by approx 2000 MB which gives less than K100/MB. If you have not been buying bundles then you have been paying too much (K1100/MB).
I, of course, welcome the 90 days to use such a bundle. As to 3G, this has been, also, for more than a year. The speed can be good at times but it is not so consistent.
Busy stealing from subscribers who are a die hard….Wake up Zambians it means they were minting before the reduction.
K1100 to K98 Â or is it K110 to K98?. 1GB we were buying at 125pin.Let them clarify.
Unless things have chnaged, what i know is the MTN Modem is far much faster and easier to use than Airtel, is MTN not already on 3G? Hope Airtel will now catch with MTN
We appreciate ba airtel.kip on with da gud works.
LTE is coming to Zambia this year, am 90% sure of that.
Nothing exciting. We have been enjoying 3G on MTN for a long time now. Even Airtel have it already but its of poor quality so the launch is meant to hoodwink those of you who are on their network to think there will be something new or improved. Just dump them.
# 26,
Keep your dreams to your head. That LTE technology you are dreaming about is not for disorganized poor African countries because its too advanced, complicated, expensive and needs highly skilled engineers whom you Africans cannot afford to pay or import from developed economies. Even designing it becomes a nightmare. Which foreign corporation would want to roll-out such an advanced technology in unstable market when it can make a killing from delivering substandard in Dial-up, VSAT and Wimax technology in 2G and 3G platforms? Just keep priding in Dial-up, VSAT and Wimax services because LTE is a preserve of the civilized world. Maybe some 10 to 15 years time after the civilized world will be in 8G.
# 26,
As California based Zambian writer Field Ruwe put it in his article posted online, Zambian intellectuals are lazy they just look to our countries to deliver them everything even toilet tissue papers, needle, floor titles, band aids, cough medicine or malaria tablets when they have had malaria for generations and lost thousands yet have kept looking to our countries to give make them medicine. Our countries know nothing about malaria.
We cannot give you such state of the art technology because we are making a killing even from the low grade services at less cost to our delivery.
Ba MTN na internet yabo ni Zee…GO MTN GO!!!!
imiponto bambi muleke wikala mu chibolya na lunshi fulu munganda mulei panga ati mwikala ku europe after mwabelenga fintu pa net kwati mwalinwa sana fi technology and airtel director is acting as if he is still in mmd government where they were peddling lies who doesnt know its long time u announced that u are on 3g but u have failed to deliver now u want to fool us mubepefye ba fayaz
these day light robbers are at it again, why does any one think zambians are so daft as to listen to bullshit from this money grabbing robbers every now and again
Bought some bundles today. I dont get this 1gb is 130 000 now from 125 000 and 2gb is now 200 000 from 185 000. so were is the improvement?
Pity,its always bether to stick to above subject fellows,than writing rubbish on zambia, the story here was 3G NETWORK ,stick to the story,each country has lazy peole,its not just zambia has lazy lads ,you should be very careful how u write your feelings about zambian people ,dont just put bad stories on zambia.if your countries dont want to donote then dont.PITY.
LT you deleted my post. Im i wrong to tell people that AIRTEL is lying? They have increased the cost of the bundle 1Gb from 125pin to 130pin and 2Gb bundle from 185pin to 200pin. Zambians wake up. Try MTN, their internet is faster and cheaper.
on LTE i know the likes of vodacom and mtn are busy trying the network problem is it cost money + you have to apply to the local goverment to operate it so its quite complicated you’ll more like see hsdpa in zambia in 2012 with hsdpa you can get speeds of 12mb to 40mb thou realistically you see speeds of 5mbs which is fast. zed main problem is competiton locally there a lot of international cables bring cheap bandwidth to africa now
we feel difference, still as slow a snail going up hill on grease pulling a brick
we don’t feel the difference, still as slow a snail going up hill on grease pulling a brick
@28 Like i said, LTE is coming sooner than you think. Do you know we have WiMax in Zambia?
this is all nonsense,these people are just thieves.I dont think services can work
The sub page shows inlfatted prices… more expensive than what we alraedy pay for
sick… now my sub is expiring within a sec
I still don’t trust these guyz. made me buy a modem i never got to use when in the rurals
I would like to disagree with people who are saying that LTE is only going to be available here in 10-15 years. I personally attended a road show at intercontinental yesterday where Huawei was show casing their LTE equipment that they had setup in a containerized truck in the car park. I was really impressed with the demonstration and also had the opportunity to see the equipment at work, using LTE you can get up to 300Mbps down-link speed and up to 100Mbps up-link speed. The equipment is in country and available for sale, its just up to the carriers to invest in this technology.
Both airtel and mtn are liers 3g hasent even yet reached in some parts of zambia people in luapula province are still using gprs and edge and u expect 4g/lte to cum this year.(forget)internet is jst too expencive here in zed. The best solution is to steal from them by bypassing ma fire walls jst like they are stealing from us by over charging.
I have an LG698 dual sim phone and it is unable to be connected to the airtel internet.