Ethiopia will join Kenya and South Africa as the only three countries to have deployed commercial 5G services on the continent as Ethio telecom completes its preparation for the adoption of 5G as of Monday, May 10, 2022.
The company is implementing the project using technology from the Chinese technology company, Huawei.
5G is set to be introduced to deal with the high volume of data transmission in dense urban networks in the country and will be upgraded to the existing 4G infrastructure which will help in user demand whilst solving data traffic.
The network is said to be applied to hotspot areas in Addis Ababa, including the areas around the head office of Ethio telecom and the premises of Bole International Airport.
Globally, 5G network services for commercial use were first deployed in 2018 by Verizon. In Africa, 5G networks are available in Kenya and South Africa.
As part of expanding its business and enhancing customers’ experience on Friday, May 6, 2022, the operator together with seven national organizations and institutions has signed exclusive business partnership agreements to distribute telecom products and services.
Based on the signed agreement, these national distributors would exclusively engage in business areas such as telebirr services, mobile airtime top-up, new SIM card sales, SIM card replacement services, handset and devices sales on behalf of Ethio telecom as main distributors as well as providing the company’s products and services for the customers by opening their own franchise shops.
Hidase Telecom Share Company, Ethiopian Postal Service, Nared General Trading PLC, Highlight Stationery & Manufacturing Trading, Smart Digital Technologies PLC, Teleport Technologies PLC and Alami Industrial Engineering are said to be the exclusively distribute telecom products and services nationwide.
Previously, the roles of these distributors have been limited to distributing voucher cards, EVD and Yimulu services. However, this new partnership exclusive agreement would enable them to widely engage in a number of Ethio telecom products and services sales at the national level.
Ethio telecom has 509 shops as well as 134 franchise shops operating all over the country. The company has also signed deals with 13 organizations to exclusively distribute Ethio telecom products and services at the company’s Zonal and Regional levels. In addition to this, there are other 48 enterprises that have been working with the company as distributors and this will bring the total number of Ethio telecom products and services distributors to 68 as a whole.
Furthermore, there are 9,448 sub-distributors and 350,102 retailers which increase the total number of organizations/institutions to be 359,618 operating jointly in the partnership ecosystem to which over one million jobs are said to be generated through these business partners.