Undertakers on Sunday damaged TelOne line in Warren Park Cemetery while digging graves leaving TelOne disconnected.
TelOne said they had to engage Harare City Council in an endeavour to repair the damaged line and were given the go-ahead. An anonymous official at the telecommunications company said:
On Sunday, in Warren Park Cemetry, a grave was allocated on top of our network line. Undertakers damaged our cables when they were digging.
They buried the deceased. We discovered on Monday that the fault was in the Cemetry and engaged authorities. We started laying new cables.
Unfortunately, since Monday till Wednesday, they were still burying COVID-19 victims near the area where our cables were damaged. Resultatnly, we were sometimes told to vacate the place to avoid contact with their projects.
On Wedneday, We engaged them again and asked for a window period to finish the refurbishment process and they agreed. We hope they won’t chase us again until we finish. We expect to have finished the process anytime soon.
Tel-One is Zimbabwe’s sole fixed telecommunication services provider providing Voice, Internet and Data services and its absence is a huge blow for its customers working from home.
The absence of TelOne services would force customers to look for alternatives including Zol Zimbabwe which is aggressively penetrating the market and or mobile network operators.
Warren Park D area has serious network issues especially when NetOne is not working since other network operators do not have towers which adequately cover the area.