Vandalism Tel One's biggest threat to service deli...

Vandalism Tel One's biggest threat to service delivery

Melody Harry (@melodymbira) / Twitter — **Melody Harry**

State-owned telecommunications company, TelOne, has experienced a 20.7% vandalism incident rate as at December 31 2022, compared to the previous year and this has greatly threatened its operations network.

The parastatal’s head of corporate communications, Melody Harry, said network theft and vandalism, especially on the copper network stood at US$510,000 for the period ending 31 December 2022.

These losses stemmed from 402 network vandalism incidents being recorded during the year translating to a 20.7 percent increase compared to the prior year.

A total of 51 500 clients were affected by vandalism-induced downtime in 2022, amounting to a 30 percent increase from 39 965 clients that were affected in 2021.

Resultantly, the need to replace the copper network with optic fibre and wireless solutions has become more urgent as these solutions are not only less susceptible to vandalism but also significantly improve the quality of experience.

To this end, funding options continue to be pursued for the phased replacement of the copper network.

Harry said that despite the challenges in the operating environment, TelOne managed to post an inflation-adjusted operating profit of ZWL$7.1 billion up from the ZWL$4.3 billion achieved in the previous year.