"Look up Zimbabwe, the future is bright," said COO of Econet Wireless, Fayaz King who also urged service providers in the country to develop more innovative strategies.

King was speaking at a Broadband Economy Conference hosted by Techzim, which aimed to unwind Zimbabwe's broadband challenges regarding affordability, zero rating, sponsored data, bundles and other business models.

"As a landing station, we are charged with a number of barriers in terms of pricing, including geographical location, port charges, discharge and regulatory issues," he said.

"It is very expensive to lay fibre, service providers need to collaborate more for it to become win-win for everyone," said Martin Mutiiria, director of Africa sales at West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC).

"When we look at the data, we realise that we need to provide more for our customers and we must look at is the speed of transaction as well as how Internet of things is morphing to a service without limits," he said.

According to a digital dividends world development report, Zimbabwe was ranked the 6th least geographically impacted country in Africa, in terms of internet costs.

The report noted that most landlocked countries [far from the cable landing stations on the coast] significantly face the "last mile" problem, referring to a relatively high cost of building the infrastructure to link to end users.

According to the report, technological change, particularly the development of cellular mobile communications and data compression techniques, has greatly reduced infrastructure investment costs and is helping to solve the last mile problem, at least in urban areas. It notes however that a different problem, described as the last 1 000 miles, plagues remote rural communities. The report notes that Zimbabwe is among the top three countries with the greatest restrictions on service trade.

"Where undersea fibre-optic cable is available, Internet will generally trump all other solutions in speed, performance, and cost," notes the report.