Safaricom Ethiopia has signed a five-year lease agreement with state-owned power utility Ethiopian Electric Power enterprise (EEP) for fibre cable utilization. With the power utility firm expected to earn up to Ksh. 308 Million a year in the first phase of the lease agreement.
According to EEP, the first phase of the lease agreement allows the telco to share 4,097km, the second phase 2,078km and the third phase 2,904km long optic fiber lines. EEP’s high voltage transmission will be used as part of Safaricom’s network. Optical Ground Wire is one of the most reliable fiber optic medium for Ethiopians in all corners of the country.
The shared infrastructure will be used as part of Safaricom Ethiopia’s network to provide national telecommunications services in forms of voice, data, video, text, messages, and conferencing.
EEP currently has 15,000km of fiber optics lines out of which some 8,745km are leased to Ethio-Telecom.
Anwar Soussa, CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia, had this to say, “We are grateful for the spirit of cooperation from EEP on the win-win partnership to support our contributions to the digital transformation of Ethiopia. Such infrastructure sharing agreements will enable us to fulfil our commitment to transform Ethiopian lives for a digital future and contribute to efforts being made to the phased operation launch.”