Liquid Intelligent Technologies has laid out about 20 000km of fibre optic cable in Zimbabwe, with over 40 000 homes now connected to its network in addition to uptake of its cloud computing services, a senior executive said Tuesday.

The company has just rebranded from Liquid Telecom and has continued to lay out data cables in countries across Africa, including the DRC while also setting up datacentres in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Wellington Makamure, who oversees Liquid Intelligent Technologies in Southern Africa, said the company is pursuing a unified communications and data storage strategy in Zimbabwe.

It will also tap into talent from mining, banking, health and other key sectors to help craft suitable tech and intelligence solutions for the industries.

“There will be no retrenchments expected with this rebranding and new strategy. We are a people-centric company and we are bringing in experts from other areas and we will be retraining our staff,” said Makamure during a virtual conference with Zimbabwean journalists on Tuesday.

He explained that COVID-19 had accelerated the new strategy to shift into tailored solutions for specific industries and sectors. This will bring increased impetus and focus on tech solutions such as e-health.

Power struggle

The company said it has contingency plans in place to address network disruptions as a result of power deficiency that remains a challenge in the Southern African country.

Industry insiders believe this challenge increases the cost of business operation and this cost is transferred to the consumer.

Makamure said it is critical to have plans in place to ensure service availability, especially in light of numerous complaints from users regarding service uptime and speeds.

“There is utility power which comes on and off. We have put generators on our points to ensure our network does not go down,” he said.