Liquid unfazed by StarLink, targets rural areas

The country’s largest internet access provider, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, is targeting the rural market as part of its expansion programme in a move meant to consolidate its market share.

Speaking to journalists recently, regional chief commercial officer Central Africa, Lorreta Songola, said it is part of the group’s initiatives to contribute towards the digitalisation initiatives.

The world has fast adopted digitalisation in the past few years, which was spurred by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But internet access in rural areas and remote parts of the country remain limited due to lack of infrastructure and affordability, leaving behind a significant demographic of the country out of the digitisation drive.

Without giving the fine details, Songola said the group wants to ensure they leave no one behind by expanding coverage and packages to rural areas.

“Details on this will follow, but we are working on something. Our market includes schools who need access to the internet.

“Farmers are also a very important market segment, yet in most cases they are in rural areas where their farms are located. If we want to tap into this market we have to move to rural areas as well,” she said.

She also emphasised the need for affordable service to cater for all. In line with this, the group launched new packages and price reductions to make their service more affordable to a wider market.

Under this programme, the internet access provider is implementing upto 45 percent price reduction on their popular US dollar internet bundles packages.

This applies to four of Liquid’s most popular plans, offering customers not only significant cost savings but also faster internet speeds.

Liquid, which is a business of Cassava Technologies, is present in more than 25 countries across Africa.

With regards to infrastructure, Liquid is the largest independent network provider in Africa and other emerging markets with an extensive fibre broadband network covering over 110,000 km in the region and over 26,000km of this fibre network being Zimbabwe.

The company commands 80 percent of total market share in terms of network capacity in Zimbabwe although there are many other service providers.

However, there are prospects of a global player joining the Zimbabwe market, namely StarLink, a subsidiary of billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Meanwhile, Liquid has said they are not moved by the possible entry of StarLink into the Zimbabwean market, arguing this will be good for the Zimbabwean landscape and consumers.

Songola said Liquid remains confident of maintaining its market-leader position albeit prospects of more competition in the sector.

If licensed, Zimbabwe will be one of the few countries to have StarLink in Africa after the likes of Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.-chroncile