ETC to issue a million new mobile lines every year

ETC to issue a million new mobile lines every year
By Groum Abate
The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) aims to sell one million mobile lines annually for the next ten years starting from the Ethiopian millennium (September 2007).
An official of the corporation told Capital that the corporation's plans would greatly increase the company's revenue. ETC, the state-owned telecommunications operator, announced that the country's fixed telephone exchange capacity reached 974,193 in the last fiscal year against 857,347 in the 2004-5 fiscal year, a 20% increase, while the number of subscribers rose from 610,347 to 740,250 in the same period, an increase of 21%.

The project, planned since 2004, hopes to expand the basic telephone services, particularly in rural parts of the country.

Accordingly, the capacity of mobile networks has grown to 1,500,000 against 1,360,000 in the previous budget year, a 10% increment during the 1998 budget year. The mobile network installation, with a capacity of 130,000 lines in 84 towns, has been replaced by ETC and ZTE mobile network equipments with Awass a, Shashemene, Dessie, Combolcha, Jimma and Nekemt towns boasting specially improved services as part of the effort to enhance mobile network quality in those towns. Nokia's installation of a mobile network with a capacity of 200, 000 lines was finalized at 20 stations in Addis Ababa while Ericsson undertook a 200,000 network capacity mobile expansion project at 15 additional stations of the city.

Source: Capital Ethiopia