3G arrives in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s sole mobile operator, The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC), has launched 3G services in the capital city Addis Ababa.

Only 2.4 per cent of Ethiopia’s 82.5 million inhabitants currently own a mobile phone

The WCDMA network bandwidth supports bi-directional peak data rates of between 144-384 Kbps, with network coverage limited to 49 areas of Addis Ababa.

Ethiopians will have the opportunity to make video calls, browse the Internet, access email and enjoy other data services directly from their mobile phones.

Prices range from 2.7 birrs (US$0.27) per minute for a local video call to 32.16 birrs per minute for an international video call.

In addition to GSM, the operator also provides fixed-line, Internet and data services, and has stated that multimedia messaging service (MMS) and voice mail will be launched shortly in the country of 82.5 million people.

According to the Mobile World database ETC ended the third quarter of 2008 with two million mobile subscribers, representing a penetration rate of 2.4 per cent.