English hard is

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At Zimbabwe’s official telephone company, you can read that

TelOne’s Core Business is that of bring people together through providing appropriate, affordable and reliable telecommunications service in Zimbabwe

Their vision is truly gripping:

To be the model in the provision of appropriate, affordable and reliable telecommunication service on demand in Southern Africa

And be sure to have a look at the site’s footer

Copyright 2006 [Tel*One]. All rights reserved.
BODY>
Copyright 2006 [Tel*One]. All rights reserved.

And I love how they strive for utter customer satisfaction. Here an excerp from the faq:

Why do you take so long to offer service?
It is not that service delivery to our valued customers takes too long to offer. Each area is to be treated separately in order to see where the point of delay is coming from. Where existing infrastructure is available, service delivery should be done in the least possible time. However, our commitment is such that service provision should be completed within 3 days after the receipt of an A/N-for ordinary customers. Within 10 days after receipt of an A/N-for construction.

Why are you giving service to customers who have recently applied and leaving those who have been waitlisted for quite some time?
We offer service on a first-come, first-serve basis except in special cases and where it is proved that such a set-up was side-lined, please highlight to the District Manager of the area concerned.

When will I get the service I asked and paid for?
When all is available, i.e. cable network and numbers we can offer service in 7 days time. More waiters are a result of Network limitations and underdevelopment in some areas, in the short term voluntary and/or accounts terminations are our basis for offers.

And you just have to have a look at their internett tariffs.

At today’s rates, that means a 64k line runs at merely 425 USD per month. Their fastest connection is at a whopping 2048 k, which sets you back 13.500 USD. Per month. Excluding set-up fee. Yes, thirteenthousandfivehundred US dollars. Whoopee. Excluding “unless indicated” VAT.

Very smart. Rather than limiting the access to the Internet á la China, Zimbabwe just makes it totally unaffordable. Wrapped into third-rate-marketing-talk.

Their “acceptable use policy” links to abuse.html and consists of a simple statement:

Coming soon ……

And clicking on their tutorials give you a 404 error. But, hey, they do support Linux. Well, at least in spirit. And their hard-coded sitemap is, yes, you guessed it, “coming soon”. Too.
Want to lodge a complaint? You get a friendly “under construction” message. As is the case with the whole “online help” section.

In their endless strive for customer satisfaction, they even offer a state-of the art internet cafe (notice the singular here):

For a nominal fee, you can enjoy the following services in a comfortable environment - high-speed Internet access (128kbps), e-mail, scanning and printing

Not too surprizingly, the “Terms and Conditions” are not a link. And I just love their corparate slogan:

Bringing You Together

More info on Zimbabwe and its friendly ruler: Economist, Wikipedia, Amnesty and some headlines.

And for those of you who think that George W. is a bad leader, a final quote about Zimbabwe’s state of economics after years of brutal rule under Robert Mugabe:

Food itself has now become the currency.