Ethio telecom's mobile money service, Telebirr, has managed to sign up over half a million users in the four days since it was launched last week.

This represents a fifth of subscribers registered under the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia's "CBE Birr" service, revealing how the banking industry will see its daunting competition to mobilise resources comes not from its traditional sector but from a mushrooming fin-tech lot. It heralds the convergence of finance and technology, disrupting the traditional way of doing banking.

At the helm of this disruption sits a smiley and cheerful Frehiwot Tamiru, CEO of the state-owned telecom monopoly.

Young, ambitious, smart and daring, Frehiwot appears to enjoy the full confidence of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), who graced with his presence the lavish launching ceremony she hosted last week. In attendance were high profile figures, including Finance Minister Ahmed Shide, his deputy Eyob Tekalign(PhD), and Girma Birru, an old hand advising the Prime Minister on the macroeconomic management. Their presence sends an unambiguous message to where the administration's heart lies in the battle yet to be fought between technology firms and legacy banks in seeking the purses of citizens in one of the most unbanked countries on earth.

In more ways than one, Frehiwot is an outlier in this battle. The first female to run the telecom monopoly in over 100 years, she had started with the Internet Network Security Agency (INSA), a cyber eavesdropping agency whose formation is credited to Prime Minister Abiy. He had served as its deputy director during the Agency's formative years before he left. Frehiwot too left the Agency to join the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC) where she was promoted to the rank of deputy CEO for Internal Support Services.

A graduate of Addis Abeba University in information technology, and postgraduate studies in business administration from the UK-based Open University, Frehiwot left the Corporation to run her own business, Doxa IT Technology Plc, a company she created to supply IT services and provide solutions.

Three months following the rise of Abiy to the top executive position of the government, he brought her back to Ethio telecom, the largest mobile operator in Africa with over 20,000 employees, replacing Andualem Admassie (PhD) as the CEO. Her tribulation remains to stir the company clear through the changing environment where not only the telecom sector is up for liberalisation, but the company itself is slated for partial privatisation. Consulting firms are hired to carry our country`s oldest company's valuation and develop its strategic path for survival under a changing and dynamic market environment.

With the expected entry of two foreign firms in the industry, Ethio telecom is slated to relegate the monopoly status it has been enjoying for over a century. Frehiwot wants to consolidate as much market position as she can, pushing the administration to let Ethio telecom hold onto the ownership of mobile terminals. Keeping the mobile money from the reach of foreign firms were some of her triumphs in retaining a competitive edge for Ethio telecom.

In the words of Prime Minister Abiy, such was a policy move his administration took but led the country lose half a billion dollars. He was referring to disappointing offers from firms bidding to obtain telecom licenses due to restrictions placed on foreign firms. Contrary to the high expectations, only two bidders - the MTN Group and a consortium led by Vodafone - have submitted bids for the two full telecom licenses being availed to foreign operators.

The Prime Minister has pledged to open the mobile money industry to foreign investors in a year.

The competitive edge Ethio telecom enjoys cuts far beyond those in the telecom sector.

Telebirr is designed to allow integration between bank accounts. The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is left with little choice but to develop interoperability with Telebirr and its core banking. The CBE is also the designated trust-account holder for Ethio telecom, where the firm deposits the equivalent of the total amount available on the mobile money system, a decision that private banks are displeased with.

Interested in integrating their services with Telebirr, private banks want to get the opportunity to open trust accounts.

"If equal opportunities are provided, every bank will strive to benefit for its own lot," says Deribe Asfaw, president of the Cooperative Bank of Oromia (CBO), who believes that Telebirr will contribute a great deal to expanding the digital economy.

Contracted to Huawei, a Chinese technology infrastructure provider, for close to five million dollars, Ethio telecom released Telebirr in five months. A two-year task completed in a quarter of the time, as Frehiwot put it during the launching. Developing the mobile money platform was put on steroids after the Council of Ministers passed a regulation allowing the state telecom operator to engage in digital financial services, with a beefed-up capital 10 times larger to 400 billion Br.

Frehiwot's drive in repositioning Ethio telecom as a fintech company is nowhere more evident than in the journey she took launching Telebirr. From approving the blessing of the regulatory authorities at the central bank to selecting a platform developer and organising a project office, the launch took less than half a year. However, industry insiders believe this could be achieved.

"Five months might seem like a rushed process in Ethiopia, but considering the trend in the global development of technology-based telecom infrastructures, the ending pitch is acceptable," according to a senior manager working at EthSwitch.

Frehiwot will find her determination to make breakeven on the investment Ethio telecom has made in half the time of the industry average of three and a half years an uphill task. Her ambition is to mobilise a 22 million customer base in just a year to achieve her goals.