Chinese firms win telecom contracts in Ethiopia

Sept 10, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) signed a memorandum of understanding with three Chinese telecom companies on a telecom infrastructure development project.

ETC has designed a four-year expansion project which would enable it to increase the number of mobile phones from the existing 1.5 million lines to seven million, the number of land lines from one million to four million and to lay a 6 km optical fibre backbone network. So far, the corporation has installed a 4,000 km optical fibre network across the nation.

The total cost of the telecom infrastructure development project is estimated at 2.4bn dollars.

ZTE Corporation, Huawei Technologies and Chinese International Telecommunication Construction Corporation (CITCC) are the three Chinese firms recruited for the project.

The minister of capacity building, Tefera Walwa; Minister of Transport and Communications Junedin Sado; the Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, Lin Lin, and other dignitaries attended Wednesday 6 September the signing ceremony held at the Sheraton Addis.

Eight companies had submitted financial proposals to the corporation. Western telecom giants like Siemens, Nokia, Alcatel and Eriksson are among the list. But ETC selected the Chinese firms.

On the hand, the Chinese telecom company, ZTE Corporation, announced its plan to build an assembly plant in Ethiopia that manufactures telecommunications equipment.

(Reporter/ST)