Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation

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The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) is the sole telecommunication service provider in Ethiopia. Based in Addis Ababa, it is the second-largest state-owned company in Ethiopia, the largest being Ethiopian Airlines.

In late 2006, the ETC signed an agreement worth US$ 1.5 billion with three Chinese companies to upgrade and expand Ethiopian telecommunications services. The three Chinese were the ZTE Corporation, Huawei Technologies and the Chinese International Telecommunication Construction Corporation. This agreement will increase the number of mobile services from 1.5 million to 7 million, land line telephone services from 1 million to 4 million, and expansion of the fibre optic network, from the present 4,000 kilometers to 10,000 by 2010. It is part of a larger US$ 2.4 billion plan by the Ethiopian government to improve the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.^[1]