Ethiopia’s state-owned service provider Ethio Telecom has announced that it is rolling out what it calls its Copper Switch-Off Strategic Initiative; its aim is to migrate 100,000 of the company’s copper-based customers to high-speed fibre optic connections during the current Ethiopian fiscal year.
The company says 60,000 customers will be migrated in the capital Addis Ababa, and 40,000 customers in regional areas. The first wave of migrations, involving 31,000 customers, will begin in early October this year.
This initiative is said to be part of a larger plan to fully migrate Addis Ababa’s copper network to fibre within three years and to extend this migration to all regional capital cities over the next five years.
Ethio Telecom says this initiative marks a significant shift towards technologies such as fibre optics, LTE and 5G.
The company’s CEO, Ms Frehiwot Tamru, said while unveiling the initiative that she has asked customers to cooperate with employees during Ethio Telecom visits to homes and offices to transition their current copper connections to fibre.
The CEO has also reportedly been involved in discussions with Shandong Hi-Speed Group General Manager Cal Kun regarding the construction of a hyper-scale data centre.
Shandong Hi-Speed Group, a Chinese investment business, has apparently expressed its willingness to collaborate in both the construction and financing of the data centre. No other details have yet been made available.
Local press reports say that Ethio Telecom has has already built two modular data centres, with three more under construction.
