The Swedish vendor will provide mobile communications equipment and services such as design, planning, deployment, tuning and optimisation to Ethio Telecom, to help improve the capacity and performance of its 2G/3G network.
“Ethio telecom sees this agreement with Ericsson as an important step towards fulfilling the country’s need for communication under the Telecom Expansion Plan,” said Andualem Admassie, CEO at Ethio Telecom. “We believe in a long-term partnership with Ericsson.”
The deal is expected to ensure an improved network quality for Ethio Telecom subscribers in southern Ethiopia, as well as increase network capacity to meet the demands of its 60 million subscribers nationwide.
“Ethiopia’s 3G market is rapidly growing, driven by Ethiopian’s high demand on connectivity; Ericsson is devoted to support the development of Ethiopia’s telecoms industry, leveraging our global expertise and technology leadership,” said Rafiah Ibrahim, head of MENA region at Ericsson.
“Today’s signing of the framework agreement will further solidify our partnership with Ethio Telecom as we will work together to ensure rewarding new user experience for Ethiopian consumers in the new connectivity era and we are fully confident that we will together achieve this objective.”
The signing was hosted by Ethiopia’s Minister of Telecommunications, H.E. Dr. Debretsion, and was attended by representatives from Ethio Teleocm and Ericsson.
The partnership with Ericsson followsa warning from the Ethopian government in November this year to Chinese vendor ZTE that it may lose its contract with Ethio Telecom if it does not review its pricing.
