Econet Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Mboweni, said the newly re-launched Buddie, would improve coverage. “We have upgraded our system to unify all our prepaid customers under the Buddie brand,” Mboweni said.

He said the unified new Buddie brand would be loaded with many new unique services, currently not available in Zimbabwe.

Mboweni said the newly unveiled prepaid international roaming package would enable Econet prepaid customers to use their Econet lines in neighbouring countries.

“This means customers travelling to these countries can carry their Econet lines with them. When you get there, you just switch over to the partner network in that country, and use your phone. You no longer have to switch SIM cards when travelling in the region,” said Mboweni.

The Econet boss said the prepaid roaming was unique to Econet and it is being launched after months of development. He said work was in progress to get roaming to more countries in the near future, including the UK and the USA.

“In addition to prepaid roaming, the re-launched Buddie will also now have the “missed call alert. If a customer misses a call because they are busy, out of range, their phone is switched off or when they do not answer a call, an SMS notification is sent to them when they become available, indicating the number and the time of the missed call,” said Mboweni.

Econet plans to roll out a string of exciting new innovative services including comprehensive per second billing options.