Ethiopia: Ethio Telecom partners with Huawei to boost 4G capacity
August 20th 2025
The incumbent operator is stepping up initiatives to meet growing consumer demand and consolidate its position against the competition. For the 2024/2025 fiscal year, it has announced a billion-dollar investment in its network.
Ethiopian state-owned Ethio Telecom is continuing its efforts to roll out 4G. The incumbent operator has deployed a GigaAAU FDD tri-band Massive MIMO site in partnership with Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei. This technological solution combines three frequency bands into a single antenna, optimizing infrastructure utilization while increasing network capacity.
1 antenna
In a statement released on Friday, August 15, 2025, Huawei indicated that this new configuration is already helping to absorb the increase in mobile traffic. 4G data volume is said to have increased by 70%, while the average speed experienced by subscribers has increased by nearly 68%.
This initiative comes as Ethio Telecom accelerates the rollout of its 4G network. The company claims to have expanded LTE services to 512 additional cities during the 2024/2025 fiscal year ending last June, bringing the total number of cities and districts covered to 936. For the same period, it announced a $1 billion investment in its telecoms infrastructure.
These efforts come at a time when 56% of Ethiopia’s estimated 132.1 million population was still not covered by 4G by 2024, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The Global Telecommunications Association (GSMA) estimates that by 2023, 41% of subscribers were using 4G. By strengthening its network, Ethio Telecom is positioning itself to attract new subscribers as demand for broadband connectivity continues to grow.
According to the GSMA, 4G adoption is expected to reach 50% of mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, up from 31% in 2023. This shift is expected to be a key driver of operator revenues, which would increase from $40 billion in 2023 to $61 billion in 2030. In Ethiopia, the share of 4G in subscriptions is expected to reach 69% by this date.
As a reminder, at the end of the 2024/2025 financial year, Ethio Telecom recorded a turnover of 162 billion birr (approximately $1.15 billion), an increase of 72.9% year-on-year. The company claimed 80.3 million mobile phone subscribers and 46.6 million mobile internet users.
However, the deployment of GigaAAU FDD tri-band Massive MIMO technology is still in its early stages. While initial results appear encouraging, neither Ethio Telecom nor Huawei have specified the scope or timeline for its expansion, leaving open the question of the country’s actual coverage in the short and medium term.
The operator will also have to contend with increasingly fierce competition. Safaricom Ethiopia, present on the market since 2022, announced in April 2024 a $1.5 billion investment plan over three years to expand its network and strengthen its presence in the Ethiopian market. The advent of a third operator is also planned by the authorities as part of the liberalization of the national telecoms market.
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