The company’s management has announced targets to raise telecoms penetration to 61%, with more voice, data and internet customers, and new business streams.
CEO Frehiwot Tamiru (pictured) said she wanted these actions to push Ethio Telecom’s annual income up by almost 24% year-on-year to 70 billion birr (US$1.5 billion).
In July 2021 the company announced its revenue for the last 12 months was 56.5 billion birr ($1.29 billion).
The company is about to face competition from Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia, in a partnership with sister companies Vodacom and Vodafone, along with other powerful backers. Ethio Telecom is fearing that Safaricom, which has a 63.6% market share in Kenya, will be an aggressive competitor.
At the same time the government of Ethiopia is trying to sell a 40% stake in Ethio Telecom. Orange is so far the only declared bidder. South Africa’s MTN has decided not to continue with any Ethiopian activities.
Ethio Telecom’s management issued a statement that it wants to expand its LTE Advanced network “in Addis Ababa and in regional towns following data traffic growth and demand”.
It wants to improve network coverage and capacity so that it can add “more than 3.88 million” extra mobile connections, and it plans to enhance its IT systems.
The company added: “5G mobile technology will be introduced as a pilot”. The company has already launched a mobile money service, a market sector in which Safaricom has specialised.
Ethio Telecom set some numerical targets in its business plan, which runs from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022.
It wants to increase total subscribers by 14% to 64 million, including mobile voice subscribers by 13% to 61.37 million, data and internet users by 16.2% to 28.5 million, and fixed broadband subscribers by 48% to 554,000. “This is expected to bring telecom penetration to 61%,” said the company.
Ethio Telecom said it “aspires and works to become a preferred operator by its customers, partners and stakeholders”.
