A half-day Internet Service Provider ISP forum was conducted on February 28, 2004 at Sheraton Addis by Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) in collaboration with US Embassy with a view to exchanging information and sharing experience on the benchmarking of the telecom sector.

The forum which was attended by ETC senior executives, American delegates, Ethiopian Telecommunication Agency General Manager and invited IT professionals and guests, was opened by ETC General Manager Ato Tesfaye Birru and was chaired by Dr. Hailu Ayele of Addis Ababa University.

In his presentation on overview of National ICT building process, Ato Asfaw HaileMariam, Deputy General Manager of Information Technology and Data services Department highlighted on ICT’s historical development in Ethiopia, the major problems or key drivers of the ICT sector and the main drivers of ICT infrastructures in the country.  He further outlined four large ICT infrastructure projects of ETC such as Broadband VSAT, Broadband multi-media, Broadband Internet and corporate intranet.  Ato Asfaw also mentioned ETC’s capacity limitation specially in terms of highly skilled and trained human resources that can catch up with the ever technological changing in the telecom industry.

The second panelist, Dr. George Navadel’ Information Management Officer, US Embassy made presentation on reflection of ETC expansion and its countrywide implications/ opportunities: Dr. Navadel overviewed ETC’s infrastructure expansion and successful implementation of its mission as well as expressed the corporation’s fantastic improvement compared to its previous status.  Indicating I.T.’s remarkable role in Ethiopia’s social and economic development, he remarked the need to strengthen the collaboration of all governmental and non-governmental entities for the growth of ETC.

In his presentation on the Moroccan example of value added service provision, Mr. Karl Stanzick, president of Morocco Trade and Development Services, outlined such value added service provision as educating users, sector specific requirements, creating dynamic sector and jobs, attracting foreign direct investment, developing locally specific services, generating revenues for the country.  According to Mr. Karl, what value added service provision needs include infrastructure, rules and regulation, fair and open competition, private investment and courage to face challenges.

Another panelist, Mr. Dan Ispita, Rural Telecom Expert, elaborated the experience of other telecom operators in different countries and recommended for the involvement of small local telecom operators such as tele centers, internet café, etc that could better serve the society through diversifying service to customers and drive market for the large telecom company.

In his presentation on communications regulatory issues pertaining to ICT expansion and new technology, Mr. Brian Mitchell, Telecommunications Regulatory Approaches in Nigeria, indicated the reason behind Nigeria’s growth in the tele density is its direction to pursue a multi-carrier strategy by segmenting a market to provide telecom service to a society and to liberalize the sector to apply universal access as a national goal and to pay attention to human resource development endeavors.

Furthermore, Mr. Lane Smith, USAID, Africa Global Information Infrastructure Project, made presentation on ICT and Development in Africa: Outside world experience regarding ISP.

In his keynote address to the forum, ETC General Manager Ato Tesfaye Birru said that the corporation strives to address the needs of its stakeholders through realizing its overall reform program and to cope with the dynamism in telecom industry by making itself modern, vibrant and competent telecom service provider. To this end, ETC would use as option even to outsource and employ high expertise of the telecom sector from abroad, he added.

The General Manager also indicated the Ethiopian Government’s emphasis to prepare a plain field to create strong and reliable telecom industry through allocation of huge investment on ICT infrastructure development so as to realize the country’s information economy transforming the population into informed society.

He also explained about ETC’s present engagement in both the development and the business missions as well as stated the role of the corporation’s multi-faceted activities in boosting private sector service operators that will in turn provide a society with diverse services.

The General Manager finally extended his heart-felt thanks to the participants and the presenters for their respective contributions to the forum and pledged to organize similar program in the time ahead.

The participants of the forum widely dwelt upon the experience of other countries on value added services, the need to be honest to the customers with quick response to their needs, the presence of big chance for the involvement of private sector in value added services including in the content and in the resale of the services based on the premises of the regulatory body.