HARARE – NetOne customers suffered a more than 10-hour service downtime on Thursday night into Friday morning after the company said it was performing a “major system upgrade.”
In a major disruption, customers were unable to make direct calls, send SMS or go on the internet.
Ahead of the planned switch-off, the country’s second biggest telecoms company said in a statement: “NetOne wishes to advise that there will be a major system upgrade from 11PM, June 30, 2022, to 9AM on July 1, 2022.
“There will be interruption of normal service and any inconveniences are sincerely regretted.”
By 10AM on Friday, the NetOne network was still down as customers voiced their anger on social media. Some decried insufficient notice.
One tweeted: “Why didn’t you send text messages to all NetOne numbers? You assume that everyone has data to see your notice on Twitter? This is poor communication.”
Another added: “Is it necessary really to switch the network off totally? Those of us who rely solely on you are now greatly inconvenienced the entire time of your so-called system upgrade.”
NetOne has 4 million customers compared to Econet’s 8.8 million subscribers. Telecel is third with about 500,000 subscribers.
