In the first half of the current fiscal year, Ethio telecom generates a total of 33.8 billion birr in revenue hitting 96 percent of its target whilst moving 19.9 percent clear of its previous budget year’s financial mark at a similar period.
From the total revenue share, Mobile voice accounted for 47.4% while Data and Internet contributed 28%, with International business shares taking 8.4%, Value Added Service accounting for 6.5%, infrastructure share holding 2.2% while the remaining 7.5% stemmed from other sources. During the period, 64.8 million dollars in foreign currency was generated from international business which met 90% of the telecommunications firm’s target.
As the firm indicates, its total subscribers has now reached 70 million attaining 98.6% of the subscriber base target and an increase of 15.1% which means an addition of 9.2 Million customers from previous budget year similar period. Mobile voice subscribers reached 67.7 Million, Data and Internet users 31.3 Million, Fixed Services 862.2K and Fixed Broadband subscribers reached 566.2K whilst the telecom density has reached 65.7%.
Service outages due to security instability were noted to have compromised expansion and enhancement projects implementation, supply chain, increasing operational costs and revenue impacts during the two quarters. In addition, fiber and copper cable vandalism, commercial power interruption, and delay in land acquisition for new sites deployment were stated among the main challenges during the reporting period.
“This achievement can be considered remarkable especially given the challenges posed to provide and expand telecom services and the fact that it is obtained amid a competitive market,” said Frehiwot Tamru, CEO of Ethio telecom.
The telecommunication powerhouse as stated on its performance made a loan repayment of 3.4 billion birr or 60.8 million dollars for the projects.
As part of expanding its business, ethio telecom recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Tele Mobile South Sudan Limited Company in the areas of international internet gateways/communication line, telecom infrastructure expansion and telecom services provisioning as well as other related services. Additionally Frehiwot has also indicated that her team is assessing the Djibouti telecom sector to make similar engagements.
“In addition to efforts of expanding revenue, we have formulated and implemented a cost saving strategy by avoiding unnecessary costs, and were able to save 3.5 billion birr, achieving 134% of the plan,” said the CEO.
Furthermore, a total of 228 project works that would help expand and strengthen the company’s infrastructure, increase network coverage and capacity were carried out enhancing the capacity to serve 5 million additional customers.
The firm also launched its pre-commercial 5G mobile service in the city of Adama, to enable mission critical services and realize technologies such as internet of things.
Also through its digital financial service telebirr, it has acquired more than 27.2 million customers and transacted a total of 166.1 billion birr in the economy in six months, generating an income of 82.5 million birr.
As agents and merchants are needed to ensure the delivery of the service to many and increase accessibility of telebirr, the firm has used 372 service centers and engaged with 112 master agents, as well as more than 98.8 thousand agents and more than 25.5 thousand merchants.
In addition, system integration with 18 banks has been completed and money transfer from bank to telebirr and vice versa has been made possible with 15 banks. By launching the telebirr remittance service and linking it to international money transfer institutions, citizens in 44 countries have had the option to easily transfer money to their home country. As a result, the firm received 719.6 thousand US dollars in the last 6 months.
A total of 214 institutions have integrated their payment systems with telebirr. Additionally, 127 government services were made to initiate their payment systems digitally.
At the beginning of the fiscal year, Ethio telecom introduced its new strategy called LEAD after concluding its three year BRIDGE strategy with results of 75.6% growth in customer base, 76% growth in revenue, 104% growth in foreign exchange revenue, and 142% growth in net profit.
A few weeks ago, the telecommunications firm restored telecom services in 27 towns of Tigray region after 2 years. As indicated, maintenance of some 1,800 kilometers of fiber optics line is underway with the maintenance of 931 km of the line so far being completed.