Ethiopia is to sign a two year contract with Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corporation in the coming few weeks said Debretsion Gebremichael Minister for Communication and Information Technology.
ZTE and Huawei were bidding for the 1.3 billion US dollars telecommunications contract according to an announcement released last May.
The Ethiopian government will engage both companies allowing them to both have a share in the market according to Debretsion who gave an interview in Addis. The Minister did not specify the size of the contract that was being offered to the companies.
It is to be remembered that ZTE has worked in Ethiopia with Ethio Telecom in the last six years to provide the technology for internet and phone services.The companies will finance the telecom infrastructure expansion that is expected to include doubling the number of mobile phone users to 40 million in the next two years said Debretsion.
The idea is not to finance the project nationally but to invite companies to come in with the fiancé which is why the negotiation process is important he noted. It is expected that agreement on technical details and division of labor between the two companies will be reached in the coming two weeks said Debretsion.
{jcomments on}Source: Bloomberg
