By Last weekend all roads were leading to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe`s second largest city where business converged for arguably, the biggest business showcase event , the Zimbabwe International Trade fair 2014.
Toneo Tonderai Rutsito
Across all ICT players, Netone had a spectacular building which was specially constructed to coincide with the international exhibition, 4 days before the trade fair, The Honourable ICT Postal and Courier services, Honourable Webster Shamu officially commissioned the building on the 24 of April 2014.
Speaking to TechnoMag, Mr Reward Kangai the managing director with Netone said that Bulawayo and Matebeleland is a very important province for us we had to invest in the province to support and appreciate our millions of subscriber who reside in the area.
“We have a huge percentage of our subscribers from that region and investing in such areas is very important for us, After the trade fair, the building will be open throughout business hours serving our customers from the comfort of the ZITF without any hustles and will continuously showcase Netone products and services.”
Mr Kangai also said that their ZITF office will offer Wi-Fi access, and for all Netone customers within the Wi-Fi hotspots reach, their phones will automatically change over from mobile data based connectivity to Wi-Fi automatically.
The Spot offers Full communication with 3g and also 4g capability when available, as you move into Wi-Fi area, your device will automatically switch over to the service which will provide much affordable internet connectivity.
Mr Kangai said that The same technology has also been installed on their Bulawayo base station at Milton High school giving Netone Wi-Fi access to the students and guests across at Holiday Inn.
“The Netone Wi-Fi internet service will be available at much lower rates than the standard mobile data rates, a similar facility in the pipeline will also be added at their call centre to be refurbished at 344 Hebert Chitepo in Harare once the pine tree tower comes will in”, added Mr Kangai.
The Netone one trade fair building project was initiated this year in January only 4 months ago, and the contractors were done with a fine finish five 5days before the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair.
The Netone Managing director said that this opened up employment opportunities for the Bulawayo residents and business sector too as the contractor and employees all hailed from the province including the complete furniture for the building.
While constructing the new building, they completely razed down the Old building creating a complete new structure , with 3 stories, a base station booster on top of the building, a hangout Balcony, boardroom and a lounge all on the same building.
The total cost to complete the Netone building approximated $500 000.
Beaming out a classic scenic view at night, the NetOne building has become an outstanding feature at the ZITF.
Currently Netone had only 2 shops, in Bulawayo Central Business District complemented by mobile kiosk and a Switching centre in Ascot commissioned in 2011.
According to official ZITF statements, more than 400 local and international exhibitors turned up for the exhibition while thousands from all walks of life thronged the centre to get an up-close with the names behind brands.
In his key note address, the President of Zimbabwe, CDE Robert Mugabe saluted all the businesses, both local and international who came in and supported the event to be a success and challenged technological players to come up with solutions that solve our bespoke problems.
President Mugabe also handed over award trophies to 14 various industry players and of great interest to us was the best ICT exhibitor of the year which was scooped by Econet wireless Zimbabwe while Telone came second as runners up and Potraz settled at the third position.
Ironically, the adjudicators completely missed out Netone from the list which was the talk of the town. Maybe technically because it was not an exhibiting stand but a fully fledged building yet it was still serving the same purpose, just like any other buildings.
While hundreds of exhibitors including all the award winners had state of exhibiting stand, Netone managed to move away from the norm by constructing a fresh new exquisite 3 story building which wowed thousands at the trade fair.
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