By 
Last weekend Zimbabwe president, Emmerson Mnangagwa officiated the unveiling of fibre cable optic link from Vicfalls to Beitbridge, a high capacity last mile link which had an anticipated 10gbps link for the launch, unfortunately it failed the anticipating crowds as NetOne saved the day!
NetOne deployed COW Cellular On Wheels at Somabula
If it was not for the NetOne Cellular On Wheels (COW), the thousands who had travelled to the deep rural area of Somabula would have endured a full 8 hours of complete isolation and disconnection as Econet and Telecel signals were all struggling in the area.
The Bandwidth and Cloud Services Group (BCS) , who came all the way from Kenya and were running all the connectivity logistics but had a single open access point, for a known 10 000 plus crowd gathering, which immediately crushed, suffering maximum user issues and backhauling challenges.
The BCS team failed the test and the only moment they had to prove their technical prowess after promising unlimited connectivity of a dedicated high powered fibre link to the crowds, unfortunately no-one enjoyed or tested their link as it was largely down, inaccessible and to those who connected, it had pathetic speeds.
We went to the event anticipating dedicated links for our live broadcast, unlimited access to all the three centres being commissioned, provisional backup links and possibly secured access points for VIP or special services, but all these basics were never done, a clear clumsy and ignorant fashion to launch a connectivity link.
The main link which was being launched could have been a perfect product, but we were denied the moment to actually feel the connectivity
In numerous times we could not go into the access point gateway, where we were lucky, we even failed to do a simple Tracert, after successive pings, as we tried to understand the routes or possible backhaul faults to separate the traffic congestion from the access point to the last mile, thank God NetOne had a back up plan.
Mobile Phone calls, data connectivity and text messages for the day were being carried by the mobile NetOne base station, which anticipated danger before hand.
This was a good strategy and well planned deployment by the technical team and leadership of NetOne who anticipated not just the crowd but a revenue opportunity, which they must have mopped up some good thousands of dollars, as many turned to them for rescue.
This was supposed to be a glorious day for connectivity, after our local Zimbabwe partners Dandemutande had invested a whooping $8million into the super highway link, the clumsy technical team had no clue on how to take the crowd down the infinite optic cables.
Comments