adminAddressing journalists at the launch of the gadget in Harare yesterday, Econet Wireless services chief executive Mr Darlington Mandivenga expressed concern over the effects electricity shortages in the country were having on their operations.
“We realised that constant power cuts in the country are hampering our operations as they are the major contributor to network problems and congestion and that our customers are now finding it difficult to communicate as most of the time their mobile phones were off because of the unavailability of electricity.
“A survey we conducted established we actually lost between 20-30 percent revenue because mobile phones were switched off either to save power or because there was no electricity at all,” he said.
Econet therefore, now offers its customers the solar way generation 2 lantern simply known as the SW15 which is an improvement of the previous solar lantern that is already on the market.
“The SW15 comprises two charging ports and different connectors for charging different phones, in-built FM radio, a lamp and it also has its solar panel but can also be charged using electricity. It is water proof and when fully charged depending on how many functions that are in use the gadget can last between 12-24 hours,” said Econet Solar head Ms Dorothy Zimuto.
“We have been motivated to constantly improve our products due to the overwhelming support we are getting from our customers and I am proud to say that since we rolled out our first solar lantern we have sold about 400 000 units reaching out about 300 000 households.
“From next month we should have set up repair and support centres to cater for our customers so that they can get the best from our products,” added Zimuto.
At the same event, Econet also launched another charger, which consists of a single charging port and a solar panel that also comes with different connectors for different phones that use different chargers but with no FM radio.
Online Reporter