In the first half of the current fiscal year, Ethio telecom incurred an estimated 100 million Br in losses due to damages caused by a total of 547 cases of vandalism to its infrastructure. The findings were shared at the Telecom Infrastructure Security Forum held last week at the Skylight Hotel. Theft of copper cables and other infrastructure, the insufficient penalty imposed on perpetrators, and low levels of awareness among communities toward protecting public property were the major causes of the damage, according to Ethio telecom. The funding noted that the damage has huge repercussions on service quality, customer satisfaction and revenue generation, as well as on the country’s economy in general. Since Ethio telecom was restructured in November 2010, it has carried out the installation of optical fibres along four routes in the capital. It also started upgrading the optical transmission network and installed additional optical fibre. The capacity was upgraded to 400 GB in September 2015, reaching a total number of 186 towns across the country. During the Next Generation Network project, the total length of optical fibre installed reached 7,906Km.