Could you present the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation, its main services and activities and its history?

The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation is, currently, the sole telecom service provider and it is state-owned. The history of establishment dates back to 1894, about 10 years after the introduction of telecom in the US. So it has a long history but despite this, it is not where it should have been. Relatively it is the oldest institution in the country. It provides basic services like fixed line (PSTN), Mobile service, and also IT and Data services. It is the sole provider nation-wide. The PSTN service being the most widely available because of its earlier introduction.The mobile service is so far confined within Addis and cities around but there is an expansion project ongoing, so within two or three months time about 17 cities out of Addis Ababa will also have mobile services and within a year, we are planning to cover all parts of the country.The current volume of mobile subscribers is about 60,000 and within the expansion project, which is to be operational in a couple of months, we are having an additional 200,000 mobile subscribers - everything is in place and we are now working to deploy it. With this plan, within a year to a year and half , there will be about 500,000-750,000 additional subscribers, so far we have studied the market and consultants are competing for the purpose of preparing the specification and it will be a nationwide coverage.

When it comes to the IT and data services, they are relatively new services as compared with the fixed line but we have 7-9 POP's around the country, we are planning to extend it further and it is supported by the Digital Data Network (DDN) in place more or less to all major cities, there is also an upgrading expansion to get full coverage across the country. In fact, as part of the expansion, we are thinking of a converged platform for all mobile, fixed and data and Internet instead of the current arrangment where each has its own network, as they share the backbone.So we are thinking of having a common backbone infrastructure for voice, data and videowithin two - three years time.

The other major introduction is broadband infrastructure which is being put into place nation-wide, primarly for the purpose of providing distance education. The current project we are working on relates to connecting all high schools all over the country and we have a broadband VSAT at each school and each district, even for governmental application and the arrangment is for the schools to have direct Internet link without interruption directly from abroad while the external connection to the Internet is through the central hub. So we are talking about 45 mega bits down link to each school in all high schools in the country. In addition to the high schools, all districts 'woredas' have these broadband VSAT's installed all over the country for Video Conference application, Internet and Data services. So this is a major investment we have gone into, using state-of-the-art technology and in addition to what we already have, this is an extra infrastructure. In fact we are going to use this infrastructure for the purpose of strengthening or accelerating the creation of an ICT industry because at each 'woreda', and high school we will have LANs, computers, you have Internet, basic education on computing and video conferencing. So this creates a huge opportunity for private firms in terms of hardware maintenance, training and many other aspects which heralds the coming of ICT.

Could you talk about the private sector under the telecommunication?

The government has taken an initiative in the last couple of years to step towards privatising this Corporation, particularly with a strategic partnership arrangement. In other words, the government has expressed interest to sell up to 30% of the share of this company to a private operator. For the last three or four years, it has engaged the services of an international consultant, they have done the asset valuation and preparation for the privatisation. Then the government has issued invitation for potential suppliers and some have showed interest, but after going through all these, it could not be materialised, the main reason being those who have expressed interest did not qualify as strategic partners because the purpose behind the strategic partnership is to bring in new technology, management capacity and even finance. The telecom companies were thought to provide the required service and aid the development of the private and the public sector. That did not materialise. So now the direction the government is considering to follow is that the issue should not be privatisation but rather competition and more liberalisation. It may not help to bring in a private monopoly in place of the state monopoly. So now we are considering alternative options. If we are talking about competition, then definitely we are not only talking about one player. So the future direction we are looking into is to have a strong telecom and ICT industry as a sector. This company, if it is successful, should have one key role in that area. So in order to have more players coming into the industry, which is a decisive factor for the industry to grow, a major requirement is to have a strong regulator. So the government has given priority to build the capacity of the regulator meaning the Ethiopian Telecommunications Agency (ETA). Though there is a regulator already, the government has seen the need to work very seriously on it to make it stronger and able to manipulate this dynamism in the sector. So then there will be a fair playground for all and then the competition can approach. ETC's share is to have a key role to be a leader, not by monopolising but competing. So there are certain strategic areas that will not be staged for privatization in which we are good at or are expected to be. For instance, we do not expect a foreign company to come and invest in infrastructure here because it is a heavy investment area. The government has a responsibility in addition to strengthening the regulatory to bring in and encourage private entities and competition - infrastructure is the key area. By doing so, we are also making things simpler for the private firms, be it for the small or big ones who want to come in.

Are they already coming in?

Once the regulatory is strengthened, they will come up with rules and regulations - that is when they will be invited. But in regard to the direction we are now working at, the government has seen the need for a strong regulator, which means a strong, dynamic, competitive ICT telecom industry. So ETC's role will be to take the leading role. It has to work its part to be leading that scenario.

What are you doing right now to improve your customer service, regarding mobile service for instance?

As I explained before, now we are on 60,000 subscriber limit in the mobile service that we are rendering. The shipment and installation is now under way for 200,000. We have already purchased the service. Another project in parallel with this is also going for 500-750 thousand. So we are trying to address the shortage. Of course availability on its own will not guarantee efficiency, thus we are now working on streamlining the organisation and preparing it to support that level of subscribers nationwide and at the same time also develop a marketing strategy that will encourage people at all levels to use it. So we are working on the availability, provision of the service and at the same time on marketing and pricing strategies to encourage users by different modes of arrangments. The prices are probably the lowest in the world. And in addition to that, we have also the sattelite-based mobile service from Erridium,.We are negotiating with this company and it has already been issued the license which will be operational soon.

How do you see the telecommunication sector in the next 10 years?

We are looking at a dynamic industry. We want to transform ETC into a sort of technologically vibrant, not only a national but an internationally competitive service provider. That is our vision. So we are looking at a more dynamic ETC. As for the telecom service, the government is looking for different directions, maybe partnering with a number of business entities because as an incumbant operator that knows the market, whoever comes from outside will be working with us as long as we are good partners.

What are you doing to attract the investors who have the knowhow to develop the market?

The regulator brings competitors, not us. We do not want to put pressure on the regulator, we want to function as operators. The World Bank and others are working with the regulator now to make it stronger, to work out these licensing issues and so on. So that is what will invite operators from elsewhere, of course if they are interested. From what we have seen in the previous bid for privatisation, not very many seem to be interested. And although most talk about monopoly privatisation, their turnout was not satisfactory. Even now in the case where downstream services are liberalised, we do not see much participation from the private sector and even in those liberalised resale services. Looking at the industry as a whole, there is more private involvment in the manufacturing, in the supply of goods and services and we buy the service from private firms, most of them are European companies and some American. Now we have close to 27 billion USD purchase. Almost all purchases are made from private sectors. We can not simply generalise that everything is a monopoly and talking about market share, everybody has a share. ETC is now creating business for the others. To come back to the point, how do we get there? We have now initiated major reforms within ETC in terms of human resource capacity building because without it we cannot reach there. So human resource capacity building is a major reform that we have initiated. This starts from motivating the existing employees, creating a conducive work environment for them to be committed to the objectives of the institution. So for them to work to the target and fully participate in ETC's business ,we are working starting from creating this sort of environment to series of training programs to develop their skills because this field is mostly affected by the dynamism in the technology. Hence, we need to keep our staff up-to-date through training and various development programs. We have a very old telecom institute here (30-40 years), we are now working to up-grade it to provide better certification courses and better telecom formal degree programs. In addition, we are also partnering with key players or suppliers to provide training in the technology. This is one major area we are working on. The other is technology reform. Now we are successful in digitising, we have more or less 90% + digitised our infrastructure and it will be finalised at the end of this year or half of next year. It overall relates to migrating to a convergent technology. So we are preparing for that to have a national master plan for the national backbone infrastructure. The third aspect, we are working on system re-engineering. We cannot go to that level without looking into our services and our operations, particularly customer service and care. Business process re-engineering through automation and IT support. Looking into our project management and procurement, there is a system re-engineering led by IT. That is the third reform. The fourth is restructuring to provide more autonomy to business units like mobile, it should be on its own. We have to introduce some sort of competition within the area and give more autonomy for regions instead of centralising everything. So we need be open for change, transparency and accountability. And next is marketing and business development strategy. We have to work hard in order to make a return out of our investment and also provide better services to customers. These are the major reform areas and now we are doing the planning aspect and depending up on the outcomes of the planning, for some areas we can do with resources from within and for some we have to buy them from elsewhere, most probably from the international market, good operators, universities - wheresoever the service is available.

Which areas are generating money in the telecommunication sector?

Mobile makes a lot of money, but looking at the coverage and limitation on the penetration, the other areas are also paying as in the case of the fixed line because there are still more people waiting for the service. Of course it depends on the economy in general.

How many subscribers are there for fixed line?

The exchange capacity that we, currently, have is close to 760,000 and the active subscribers are close to 400,000. But in due consideration of the national development initiative of the ICT telecom industry we are envisaging, we are planning to expand this subscriber base by 300,000 per year. That is the target we are working for.

What will be your message to the investors who like to come and invest in the country, in your sector?

First of all, we should welcome them, receive them here and interest them to invest in this sector, as ETC is one who is doing this. And for those who want to invest in some other sectors, to provide them with required communication service, and facilitate their communication needs. For those who are interested in investing in the telecom sector, I would like to advise them to closely follow what is happening at the regualtory and see the opportunities that are coming up for them and then whenever they decide to invest, come to ETC to develop a business relationship. So first and foremost, we are here as a service provider to facilitate their stay here as investors,be it in the telecom or in other sectors.

Could you give us some names of companies you would like to see coming in the telecom sector?

There are a number of companies in this area because the sector is dynamic and changing very fast. So in general, I would be very much interested for those companies which are genuinely interested in both business and development of the sector itself. There is a big market here and when we look at the population and the developments that are taking place in the ICT area, there is much opportunity, not only in telecom but in content development, for instance, in software, in hardware and in training. A broadband infrastructure is going to be put in place nationwide, so there are users out there who want to use this thing but need support in terms of content development, software, trouble shooting, hardware maintenance, training, at various levels.All that is open. So my message to investors in all sectors is that there are many opportunities for ICT companies down here at the moment which can be exploited for the good of both the investors and users who are longing to see and deserve better services.