Ethiopia's Sole Mobile Operator Plans MMS Launch

Ethiopia's state-owned monopoly mobile phone operator, Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) says that it plans to launch MMS within the country by the end of this calendar year. The service would be launched as a trial and details will be announced on the company's website shortly.

The plans for MMS are a bit of a surprise, as the government demanded that the SMS functionality be disabled following the contested national elections two years ago. The service was only recently re-enabled.

ZTE is currently adding 1.2 million GSM lines to the network capacity to cope with demand and also a surge in usage which occurred during the recent celebration of the Ethiopian millennium. A WCDMA overlay is also planed for some parts of the network. The network has been plagued with outages during the upgrade.

According to estimates from the Mobile World analysts, ETC ended the first half of this year with some 1.34 million customers - which represents a population penetration level of a mere 1.75%.

Posted to the site on 21st October 2007