The changes disrupted communication between the data centres, which halted services. The outages left people around the world unable to communicate on the platforms for more than six hoursįacebook released an update late Monday night stating that configuration changes on the backbone routers that co-ordinate network traffic between the company's data centres was the cause of the outage. Service began resuming for some users at around 6 p.m. If they stay this course the MNOs are proving that they are out of touch with their consumers as well as being incapable of projecting the potential problems of having the country locked to one service.Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back online after experiencing a worldwide outage on Monday that lasted throughout most of the day. Econet Telecel and NetOne no longer have any excuses for not testing out a unified messaging app bundle. However, the WhatsApp outage caused a communication gap for a good number of Zimbabweans. This is true because very few have actually read the policy and some even agreed to it without even thinking about it.
The need for one clearly arose when WhatsApp announced its privacy policy but instead of leading the market not one of the MNOs took the plunge.Īround that time my colleague wrote of what little effect the privacy policy will have on Zimbabweans because the majority don’t care. There has been no reason or argument against a unified messaging app bundle from the MNOs. Econet, NetOne and Telecel are either lazy or stubborn Not everyone has that option and this is why we need a unified Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp bundle. My knee-jerk reaction was to got Telegram and communicate there while WhatsApp got its house in order. An example of this were my own actions when WhatsApp went down. This outage was a microcosm of that event, but as with the internet shutdown, those who could afford an alternative weren’t really affected. GSM calls and SMS would have been an option but would have been used sparingly. If you didn’t have the knowledge, couldn’t afford the data to download a VPN, and run an alternative like Telegram you were in the dark. If this seems like a trifle to you cast your mind back to 2019 when the government shut down the internet. For about half an hour or more there were a lot of people who had no line of communication. Privacy policy aside, the outage caused a gap in communication for those who can only afford a WhatsApp bundle. Both messaging services have seen a massive boom in users since WhatsApp announced that it would be sharing information with Facebook. This policy then forced the privacy-conscious folk who can afford general data bundles and home Wi-Fi to migrate to Telegram and Signal. However, sharing information from WhatsApp whatever it may be goes against the privacy mantra the company said it stands for. WhatsApp can not read the contents of your chats because of end-to-end encryption. These changes meant that certain data, mainly from businesses using it for customer service purposes, would be shared with Facebook in an effort to monitise the platform.
In this case, it started when WhatsApp said that it was changing its Privacy Policy. The one thing I have harped on and on about is the need for the market to have options. If you walk around now you’d be hard-pressed to find someone with a device that can run WhatsApp who says they don’t have or use it on their phone. Informal traders (who make up a large portion of the economy) had a relatively cheap market place by way of groups and contacts to push their wares. Even before the pandemic, WhatsApp was a gateway for business as well as regular communication. Zimbabwe is heavily dependant on WhatsApp. These bundles made sure that you can use your data specifically for WhatsApp without it being used by any other app and it created a problem. This relative affordability and convenience meant that Zimbabweans swarmed in their droves to WhatsApp. A GSM call on the other hand will set you back around ZWL$6.4175 per minute which if you look at the latest Econet data bundle prices is a dollar and some change more than a 4MB Daily WhatsApp bundle.įor the same amount, you can get a WhatsApp bundle and you can talk to far more people (via chat and call) than you would via GSM call. Comparing costs a WhatsApp call uses around 740 KB/minute according to a report by Android Authority.
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