Ethio Telecom heralds copper switch-off...eventually

Nonetheless, it's a noteworthy achievement for an incumbent operator in a country that not too long ago was widely referred to as one of the last untapped market opportunities in the telecoms sector.

Admittedly, Ethio Telecom only has 100,000 customers on its copper network and most of them are located in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, so as network transitions go, this is not one of the industry's biggest undertakings. Nonetheless, shifting customers from one technology to another is not without its difficulties, and it's a credit to Ethio Telecom that it is committing fully to fibre at this stage.

Its announcement initially implies that the transition will happen imminently. The telco said it will migrate its copper customer base to fibre in the coming business year. Given that the fiscal year in Ethiopia runs until early July, you could be forgiven for thinking that all customers will be on fibre by next summer.

But the devil is in the details. It is a "wide-ranging national initiative that requires huge investment," Ethio Telecom said, sharing that it aims to fully migrate the fixed network in Addis Ababa to fibre within the coming three years, major regional cities in the five years subsequent to that, and the remaining urban centres and districts later on.

That's actually a pretty long time to get 100,000 customers on to a fibre network.

Ethio Telecom has 60,000 customers in Addis Ababa and 40,000 in regional cities, but the first phase of the project covers just 31,000 customers in selected areas of the capital.

Despite the rather extended timeframe, Ethio Telecom is not wrong in describing the move as a "significant advancement" in the development of its network infrastructure.

The telco, in a previous incarnation, laid the first telephone line in Ethiopia 130 years ago and has been using copper to provide fixed Internet services to its customers for the past 20 years.

Times have changed in Ethiopia though and the incumbent is now faced with competition from private operator Safaricom, which launched mobile services there almost exactly two years ago, and is undergoing a privatisation attempt of its own; the government failed to find a foreign investor for Ethio Telecom, but is still looking to sell a 10% stake to retail investors and to float some shares...once Ethiopia's still-in-the-pipeline stock exchange is up and running.

Safaricom inked a dark fibre deal with Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) to use its fibre network more than two years ago, phase one of the agreement covering the lease of 4,000km of cabling. Presumably it is using the fibre to hook up its mobile infrastructure; there is no indication that Safaricom is selling fibre-based fixed Internet. But either way, the very presence of Safaricom is driving Ethio Telecom forwards in its modernisation endeavours.

EEP, incidentally, is keen to expand its fibre footprint. By the end of this year it aims to have secured a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the French Development Agency (AFD) to help it fund the installation of fibre-optic cables, Africa Intelligence reported in July, weeks after the European Union approved a €40 million grant for the project. As well as using those lines to manage its grid, the EEP would be able to lease them to the telcos.

Whether building or leasing, it's clear that Ethio Telecom has committed to the move to fibre. We're just not expecting it to announce the finalisation of its copper shutdown for a good few years yet.