Ethio Telecom is partnering Swedish vendor Ericsson to expand its 4G services into the South West region of Ethiopia, the latter has announced. The upgrade will be carried out during the remainder of 2021 and will use Ericsson Radio System products and solutions, with the core expansion taking place in Ethio Telecom’s regional data centres and the data centres in Addis Ababa. Through the partnership, Ethio Telecom will reportedly modernise its network by transitioning from the current Operations Support Systems (OSS) systems to the more advanced and high-capacity Ericsson Network Manager (ENM). Ethio Telecom will also introduce Ericsson Cloud Packet Core and Ericsson NFVI (Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure) as part of the modernisation effort.
Commenting, Ethio Telecom’s chief executive, Frehiwot Tamru, said: ‘We are excited to collaborate with Ericsson in expanding our 4G/LTE Advanced service. This will bring high speed internet to the South West region, which will be vital for achieving Ethiopia’s digitalisation ambitions while improving the reach of telebirr, our mobile money service.’