In a report titled “Measuring the Information Society 2011”, ITU said Zimbabwe had moved up four places from a ranking of 128 in 2008 to 124 in 2010, largely thanks to an improvement in the country’s telecommunications.
The IDI ranks 152 countries according to their levels of ICT access, use and skills. According to the report, Zimbabwe scored an IDI value of 1.81 in 2010, up to from 1.49 two years earlier.
Zimbabwe was ranked joint first in terms of countries with the highest jump in access ranking. The southern African country, mostly known for its political problems, jumped from 149th position in 2008 to 133th position in 2010 in terms of access to fixed telephone access, Internet bandwidth per user, proportion of households with a computer, and proportion of households with Internet access at home.
Massive investment by Zimbabwe’s three cellular phone providers nudged the country’s mobile penetration to 60 percent from a low 13 percent in 2008.
Cumulatively, the country’s three mobile service providers – Econet Wireless, Telecel Zimbabwe and the state-run NetOne – now share about eight million subscribers between them, up from 6.4 million last year.
Post published in: News