ETHIOPIA – Ethio Telecom, an Ethiopian telecommunication company, has signed a three-year contractual agreement with five virtual internet service partners to resell its internet service.
The state-owned telecom provider signed partnership agreement with Sky Net IT Solutions, Zergaw ISP, Web Sprinks, Viva Tech Trading and Dule Business Group,
Frehiwot Tamiru, Ethio Telecom CEO, described the agreement as “long-term agreement” aimed at boosting the accessibility of the company’s regular broadband services to its customers which will enable the state telecom provider to make its limited resources available to customers.
As per the signed contract, the mentioned five partner firms would exclusively purchase the fixed bandwidth internet service from Ethio telecom and provide high bandwidth internet service to the customers across the country for the coming three consecutive years.
Thereby customers will have more options to get fixed broadband internet services from these five partner organizations in addition to Ethio telecom’s sales centres.
A statement by the company said that the partners are strongly expected to actively play their roles in heralding the digital Ethiopia plan of the company by providing efficient and quality services to their customers in collaboration with Ethio telecom.
“These days, Ethio Telecom is immensely working at a high priority to avail fixed broadband internet service to the customers nationwide in partnership with virtual internet service providers,” said part of the statement.
“In line with this, our partners have been able to avail fixed broadband internet service to 20,700 customers so far. To make sure that the fixed broadband internet service is accessible across the nation and increase the number of users to 3 million by the end of 2026 G.C, our company has designed and been executing a wide range of systems and strategies.”
Ethio telecom partners Amhara Bank
Ethiopia’s Amhara Bank has signed an agreement with Ethio Telecom to use the incumbent operator’s data centres to improve service to customers.
Ethio Telecom’s CEO, Frehiwot Tamiru signed the agreement in Addis Ababa with Henok Kebede, president of Amhara Bank.
The telco, which is still a monopoly because of the delayed start to rival operator Safaricom Ethiopia, has 84 customers or partners for its data centre service, and is expanding its data centre footprint.
“So far, our company has built two modular data centres and three more data centres are under construction that will soon have five data centres altogether,” said Ethio Telecom.
The expansion includes what the company calls a “big green data centre”, that is being designed for 1,000 racks.
Amhara Bank will use a modular data centre that “is designed to ensure mission-critical data and equipped with extensive security and compliance system controls with 99% reliable connectivity and high electric power saving capacity,” said Ethio Telecom.
“It is also a high-capacity world-class standard data centre managed by skilled manpower.” It has five separate fibre connections, “with automatic switchover functionality to ensure service reliability”.
Amhara Bank, which started operations last year, is one of the new banks that have started up in Ethiopia following the market liberalisations of prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who was elected to power in April 2018.
The bank has more than 185,000 shareholders and a paid-up capital of almost six billion Ethiopian birr (US$115 million).
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