AfriMax where are you?

Afrimax is ‘one of the largest 4G wireless voice and data communications providers across Sub-Saharan Africa’. Afrimax grow their business off the Vodafone brand; they are a franchisee of the brand. Afrimax are registered with ZICTA under the name Mobile Broadband Limited.

What we do know about Mobile Broadband in Zambia:

• ZTE won a tender last year to supply LTE equipment
• Afrimax will launch as Vodafone
• Netone has built a data centre for the Afrimax

Afrimax are on a massive recruitment drive hiring talent Zamtel, MTN and Airtel among others. The hiring profile for their senior management has targetted experienced campaigners in the local market. The financial muscle of Afrimax has enabled them to lure talent away from incumbent telcos, impressive. I hope as part of their talent recruitment they balanced experienced employees with young, potential-filled employees not tainted by the glass ceiling of experience.

The company has spent big on their infrastructure with the $120 million LTE build by ZTE in Cameron and Zambia being the crown jewel. The LTE network will allow Afrimax to have a head start on both Airtel and Zamtel with regards to network capabilities, only MTN have a nationwide LTE network. This has the potential to usurp a sizeable data customer base from the other Telcos and ISPs not investing in their access networks. I hope this will serve as a catalyst for both Airtel and Zamtel to re-invest in their access networks. An exclusively LTE network means the company needs to roll out its own devices and not leverage off devices already in people’s hands. Rumour has it that Afrimax is discussing with the some local electronics chain stores to resell their devices. This is a key part of their ability to succeed because a robust distribution network is required for customers to use their services. In addition to the LTE access network, a data centre has been completed by Netone for Afrimax, Netone are Zambia’s only carrier-neutral data centre. Investment in a data centre demonstrates that Afrimax will be in the market for the foreseeable future.

They have registered their public domain and foregone the traditional ISP domain convention of name.zm. The registered domain name is vodafone.co.zm. No website yet or A records. The records are hosted by Liquid, surprising because as an ISP with a datacentre they should be able to host their own records. It may just be transitional until the data centre is powered on and offering service:


; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> vodafone.co.zm -t ANY @ns1.zamtel.zm
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL:

;; Query time: 768 msec
;; SERVER: 41.72.99.86#53(41.72.99.86)
;; WHEN: Mon Apr 4 10:23:52 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 193

 

The rumoured target date for Vodafone Zambia’s public launch was April. April is here. I hope with the size of the investment and the current wage overhead they launch this month. As a customer, I want competition in the market including better prices and faster speeds!