Ethiopia undertaking biggest telecom investment in Africa
(5 November 2007)
Ethiopia has been investing 1.5 billion USD in the telecoms industry, which is the biggest investment an African government has undertaken in the sector, the Minister of Transport and Communication said.
The minister, Juneydi Sado, said at the "Connect Africa" summit in Rwanda that the country is implementing a 1.5 billion USD grand Mobile telephone infrastructure until 2010 to benefit 85 percent of the country.
Juneydi added the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation had a target to increase the mobile and fixed-line subscriber base to over 10 million by 2010 from the current 3.6 million.
The government project plans to increase the fiber optics network to 14,000km from the current 4,000km and the government also intends to install 65,000 public phones throughout the country, he added.
Ethiopia is already hooked onto a submarine cable running from Port Sudan through the Red Sea to Europe but it also plans to connect other cables from Djibouti and Kenya, it was learnt.
Concerning opening the sector to the private sector, the minister said the government has prioritized the issue of developing the basic infrastructure before allowing a second operator in the sector.
''Our policy at the moment is that we are not looking at a second operator. Once the basic infrastructure is deployed by 2010, then we can look at such an issue, because of the universal access issue, sometimes operators might not be interested in the remote areas where financially it might not be viable, so we want to address this issue first and after that we can talk about this public-private issue,'' he concluded.(ENDS)