State-owned MNO NetOne experienced disruption to its network service following a major system upgrade last week.

After customers battled to call, send SMS or access the internet, NetONe issued a statement: “NetOne wishes to advise that there will be a major system upgrade from 11 Pm, June 30, 2022, to 9 AM on July 1, 2022. …there will be a normal service and any inconvenience is sincerely regretted.”

Despite having confirmed via its Twitter account that the system upgrade was complete and that normal service had been restored, NetOne received complaints about erroneous data and voice balances.

This prompted the company to issue another statement via SMS, which read: “NetOne would like apologise for the intermittent service being experienced, following the system upgrade. Our engineers are working to restore data balances to normalcy.”

ICT expert and former NetOne CEO, Reward Kangai said, “The best way to resolve the six-year-old NetOne crisis, remains the setting up of a Judiciary commission of Inquiry, like the much-acclaimed 1989 Sandura Commission.”

In early May, NetOne’s e-top up system went down from around midnight on Tuesday 3 May and was only restored on Thursday 5 May at 8am, which again forced the company to issue an apology notice to customers.

NetOne has 4 million customers, behind Econet’s 8.8 million subscribers with Telecel placed third position with approximately 500, 000 subscribers.