ethio telecom conducted the 4th distributors' day at Hilton Addis on April 18, 2012 to discuss the progress of commercial operations in the last three quarters of the current fiscal year and exchange ideas of mutual interest.
Jean- Michel Latute, CEO says ethio's customer base has grown considerably to over 16 million over the past nine months while penetration rate has reached 19.4%. The number of mobile service subscribers is over 15 million. The number of internet and data broadband subscribers has increased to over 170 thousand.
It was indicated that the overall performances of SIM and voucher cards distributions were pretty good although there need a lot to do to meet the target. Sales result suggests that SIM card performance is 77% while voucher card is 90% over the last three quarters.
Low performance by some distributors, violation of contractual rules, shortage of low voucher denominations and platform incidents among others were reported as challenges of performances.
As a result, ethio telecom has been taking some actions to improve performances which include fixing platform problems, increasing supply of low voucher denominations, revising SIM trade margin policy, offering credit facility, introducing new handsets and issuing of warning and termination letters.
Mr. Daniel Fermine said as a measure to enforce contractual agreements two distributors have been terminated for violation of terms of the contract. He called upon all parties to respect the contractual rules including the procedure related to the need to sell as per the nominal price of the products and services without extra discount or increment since this act would go against fair competition among the distributors.
ethio telecom is also working with Tana, Huawei, ZTE Samsung and Nokia handset suppliers to provide customer with various ranges of handsets with appropriate prices to satisfy their needs. ethio will also work with other suppliers that meet its requirements.
