One of the world largest commercial satellite communications services provider, Intelsat, has shutdown the primary satellite link for Zimbabwe's state communications company (TelOne) for non-payment. It has affected most of the ISPs in the country and resulted in very slow Internet connections.
Intelsat was an intergovernmental consortium created in 1964 who became a private company in 2001. It was sold in 2004 to 4 private equity firms. As the entry in Wikipedia reminds us: "Intelsat maintains it corporate headquarters in Bermuda, with a majority of staff and satellite functions — administrative headquarters — located at the Intelsat Global Services Corporation offices in Washington, DC. This arrangement allows the company to lobby politicians in Washington while filing tax from Bermuda". The company is actually merging with another satellite communications provider giant : PanAmSat.

TelOne's debts reach $700.000, and the whole country is running out of money. Furthermore, the EASSy (East African Submarine Sytem) project is having troubles to find its way into completion. This project is supposed to enhance Africa's connecting capabilities through a 9,900km undersea fibre optic cable. But only 7 out of 23 governments signed a protocol allowing this project to go further. At first, the connection was to be operationnal in middle of 2007, but Africans will have to wait at least 2008 and maybe longer. Some players (particularly South Africa's telecom provider Telkom) threaten to stop theirs investments.

This shutdown in Zimbabwe could potentially endanger a lot of local ISPs, NGOs or businesses who actively rely on Internet. But the average Zimbabwean is even more affected by the recent bread scarcity , the regular food, hard currency, gasoline and essential imports shortages, and the soaring inflation hitting Robert Mugabe's country.