Zim Internet Shutdown Explained

Zimbabwe experienced an internet shutdown on Tuesday. The outage occured between 11:45 to 17:17. Zimbabwean businesses as well as ordinary Zimbabweans were heavily affected.

According to news reports the shutdown was due to damages to fibre which happened in South Africa. This affected Liquid Telecomm and Econet. Certain networks worked although at times faced glitches. This included Telecel, Powertel and TelOne. Most of the internet in Zimbabwe rides on Liquid.

Postal Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe director-general Dr Gift Machengete explained the cause of the internet shutdown and said that it was caused by accidents.

He explained that Liquid Telecomm had its active and redundancy cables cut while TelOne also had its cables cut.

Information Communication According to Technology and Cyber Security minister Supa Mandiwanzira the internet blackout cost the country millions of dollars in lost revenue.