[faraixyz]

I'm glad they're here to shake things up, our local ISPs are insane. You should see some of the quotes I've gotten for internet[1] at work and that's in a rather dense place out of the city center! The worse wat $650/month for 8Mbps! The $100 plan I get at work is probably overkill but the internet is no longer a bottleneck to our work like it once was with 20 devices using a 5MBps ADSL line. Before it was legal people smuggled kits in and used the roaming plans from a neighboring country. The $350 sounds like a lot, but that's what the fibre providers charge to terminate at your house, more if they need to lay more cable. You'll find plenty in the ghetto areas.

At home I've got fibre which is about as good as Starlink offers for $100. It used to be 20Mbps and it went up to 75Mbps max late last year when it looked like starlink would enter and they're gonna do 300MBps soon. It seems local ISPs are trying to do better offering more bandwidth though it's still expensive and heavily abuses "up to" marketing. Like, there's no reason that ISP can't offer 20MBps for $30.

It's not the easiest country to do business, there are a lot of exchange rate shenanigans and ISPs seem addicted to rent seeking. Heck, getting Starlink approved seemed to be a huge mission that surprised the execs working on it.

Funny bit is that I messed up ordering the kit at work so it's in my name meaning I can technically buy the kit off of them and they can get on a business plan without a waiting list or using the overpriced "authorized providers".

[1]: https://im.farai.xyz/the-classics/blog/zim-internet-sucks/

[fwip]

Are those prices in USD, or a local currency? (Apologies for not knowing which local currency to ask about; it seems that Zimbabwe changed currency recently and no longer uses the Zimbabwean Dollar?)

[oblio]

I'm guessing the local currency as Zimbabwe's GDP per capita is $2,005, so salaries have to be lower. I doubt anyone could afford to pay 30% of their yearly income on an internet connection :-)

[kuduebrahim]

Botswana just as bad but I think slowly getting better

[lurking_swe]

this blew my mind: “The worse wat $650/month for 8Mbps”

insane.