ADDIS ABABA – Ethio- telecom announced that the enforcement measures it has taken over the past year to circumvent grey market and telecom fraud activities have led the company to positive cash position and higher level of competence.
Ethio-telecom CEO Firehiwot Tamiru said that grey market and telecom fraud had been the critical challenges facing the Company. And the efforts to circumvent these issues were not as such successful due to less coordinated responses by the then leaderships. This is despite the fact that the challenges were learnt in advance, she added.
The Company had been in uphill struggle to maintain partner and stakeholder engagement, ensure win-win business relations and long lasting engagements.
Many interventions were prepared to the leadership, staff and management for the upcoming change in market structure, thereby nurturing competitive mindset, work discipline and business orientation.”
The CEO confirmed that the radical tariff discounts (that ranged from 40-50 percent) have been made in all products and services with the objective of ensuring affordability, enhancing service usage and customer satisfaction. “With this discount, traffic has increased in a remarkable rate of 130 percent in data usage, and 19 percent in voice.”
Furthermore, she revealed that international incoming traffic has increased by more than 50 percent which was declining consistently in the previous years due to the various business and technical interventions.
It is worth mentioning that the increased traffic has been accommodated with the existing resource with minimal additional investment, optimization, and resource reshuffling, relocation and parameter adjustment.
Seid Aragaw, Ethio-telecom International Business Chief Officer, for his part stated that the Company was dealing with the problem through two approaches – commercial and technical.
He noted that they were able to bring drastic traffic increase by assessing the spots where a number of Ethiopians reside, such as South Africa, Dubai, USA, Saudi Arabia, and then the negotiation it had with the respective nations’ telecom to use Ethiopia’s telecom infrastructure.
“As a result, the revenue that was collected from international incoming went above 12 million USD, which used to be 4.4 million USD.” The Company decision to work with neighboring nations to use nation’s telecom infrastructure with reasonable discount has led many users to migrate to the legal framework of the Company.
From the technical point of view, he went on to say, critical interventions were conducted in various parts of the country with various stakes in taking legal act with the individuals that committed telecom fraud.
Ethio-telecom has worked to minimize and circumvent the challenge of telecom fraud by working together with the various relevant stakeholders, he concluded.
The Ethiopian Herald August 7/2019
BY MENGISTEAB TESHOME
