Ethio telecom, the country's sole telecom operator, is poised to launch a mobile money platform in two months, enabling customers to receive, send and make payments using their mobile phones. The project office and steering committee formed for the project kicked it off after the government authorised the company to proceed with a mobile phone-based money transfer service.

The company has already picked a mobile money solution to launch the service, built a modular data centre, and conducted two rounds of employee training.

"We'll deliver the project in a very short period of time," said Frehiwot Tamiru, CEO of the 126-year-old company.

The initiative to launch mobile money was hastened after the Council of Ministers approved an establishment regulation that allowed the state telecom operator to engage in digital financial services. The regulation, which boosted the company's authorised capital to 400 billion Br from 40 billion Br, allows the state giant to make equity investments locally and internationally.

The company started the process to launch the service over a year ago by submitting a proposal to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), which approved its application to venture into digital financial services. After getting the consent, Ethio telecom's management jumped into selecting a platform and organising a project office.

Last week, the company also announced that it expanded its 4G LTE Advanced service, which boosts mobile data capacity and speed from the capital to six towns in Oromia Regional State for the first time. Adama, Dukem, Gelan, Bishoftu, Modjo and Awash Melkasa are the towns involved.

ZTE executed the project for 2.6 million dollars, with the payment fully covered from the foreign currency Ethio telecom generated from international services. The process of launching the service took two months. The actual upgrading work took less than a month and the remaining works, such as commercial and letters of credit (LC) processes, took up the remaining time.

Ericsson, a Swedish telecommunications company that previously worked on the former 2G and 3G networks, was also engaged in upgrading the networks and integrating the network with the new advances in 4G LTE service. The new network is three times faster than the existing 4G and 14 times faster than 3G networks.