Telephone system

The phone system was once one of the best in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, but now suffers from poor maintenance; more than 100,000 outstanding requests for connection despite an equally large number of installed but unused main lines.

Main lines in use: 344,500 in 2007

Domestic: consists of microwave radio relay links, open-wire lines, radiotelephone communication stations, fixed wireless local loop installations, and a substantial mobile cellular network; Internet connection is available in Harare and planned for all major towns and for some of the smaller ones

International: Satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat

Intelsat

Intelsat, Ltd. is a communications satellite services provider.Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization , it was—from 1964 to 2001—an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast...

; two international digital gateway exchanges (in Harare

Harare

Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...

 and Gweru

Gweru

Gweru is a city near the centre of Zimbabwe at . It has a population of about 146,073 , making it the third largest city in the nation. Gweru is the capital of Midlands Province. Gweru was founded in 1894 by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson. The first bank opened in Gweru in 1896, and the stock exchange...

)

Mobile cellular: 1,226,000 in 2007

Radio

Radio broadcast stations: AM 7, FM 4 (plus 17 repeater stations), shortwave 1. Acts as the primary communication for largely rural population. All stations are stringently controlled by the government run ZBC (2002)

Radios: 1.14 million (1997)

Television

Television broadcast stations: only one state-controlled propaganda station ZBC

Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation is the state-controlled broadcaster in Zimbabwe. It succeeded the Voice of Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1980, which in turn had succeeded the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation in 1979...

, as government has shut down and refuses to issue licenses to domestic independent broadcasters such as JoyTV

Joytv

Joytv is a privately held Canadian television system owned by ZoomerMedia. Joytv airs a mix of multi-faith and family-oriented programming in the form of dramas, comedies, news magazines, talk shows and more.-History:...

 in 2002

Televisions: 370,000 (1997)

Internet

Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 6 (2000), 10 (1999)

In 2007, there were 1.351 million internet users. In June 2004 Mugabe asked ISPs to monitor all email traffic passing through their systems for "anti-national activities". ISPs protest that this is an impossible task.

Country code (Top level domain): .zw

.zw

.zw is the Internet country code top-level domain for Zimbabwe.Although no registry Web site is shown in the IANA whois listing, at least .co.zw registrations are presently being taken by the Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association, whose charter claims that one of the purposes of the...