Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has zero rated Wikipedia, Coursera, EDX.org Udacity.com Codeacademy.com and Udemy.com.
What this means is that anyone with an Econet Wireless SIM in Zimbabwe can access these websites without subscribing to any Internet data plan as long as they have an internet enabled phone.
In nigeria, we have a similar service from Airtel Nigeria. But I’ve commented on how amazed I am that Facebook, a social media site, is the only website that’s zero rated. None of the free courseware portals, like it has just been done in Zimbabwe is zero rated.
You begin to wonder what’s in it for Econet Wireless and how they were able to convince their investors to do this.
According to a TechZim, a tech blog from Zimbabwe, some music were also zero rated.
Benefits
“Econet Zero seeks to address one of our biggest developmental problems on the continent,” writes Kabweza. “Education and skill are a big problem in Africa. Where you manage to scrounge access to a simple device and a SIM card, the cost of mobile broadband data is still a big bottleneck reality for many an enthusiastic learner.”
If you’re well aware, many of these educational websites have heavy video contents. As such, this is a huge plus for eager learners in that country right now, especially those that can’t have access to WiFi at home or elsewhere.
This is going to develop capacity and enlightenment of its people. The youth population can now access quality contents from these portals and teach themselves programming and some management courses all free. I’m just imagining the huge potential of this.
If more students or those who can’t afford to send their kids to school can just get their kids a basic Android smartphone or a budget tablet like the Tecno T9, the possibilities would be endless.
In Nigeria right now, it will cost about 3,000 naira to subscribe for 1 GB of mobile data. The regular Nigerian student in the university are on BlackBerry, where the pay between 1,000 to 1,500 to subscribe to data plan on their BlackBerry phones. On the other hand, there are those that have started to move to cheaper Android phones that costs less than or about 50,000 naira that are using BlackBerry Internet Service from one of Nigeria’s mobile telco provider. The BlackBerry Internet Service of this provider not only works on BlackBerry smartphones, but also work on other smartphones like Android and iPhones.
Mobile Telco providers in Nigeria should do better than zero rate Facebook. I’m suggesting they should start with Wikipedia, advertise it and see the response from eager learners. They can then introduce other learning portals like Coursera and Codeacademy.
