Getting Connected in Ethiopia

One of the first things any­one does upon estab­lish­ing them­selves in a new coun­try is con­nect to local com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems. This blog post will out­line how as a for­eigner I’ve hooked into the phone and inter­net sys­tem here in Addis Ababa and what’s changed since my pre­vi­ous visit last sum­mer. I’ve had a rel­a­tively easy time get­ting con­nected thanks to input from other expats who have been here for some time. With­out their help, it would have taken much more time and money to fig­ure out how things work here. Hope­fully this post will be of use to other. Do note that the phone and inter­net sys­tems have changed notably since a year ago when I first vis­ited. I can only promise that this infor­ma­tion is accu­rate now. Also, since this infor­ma­tion is based on my expe­ri­ence, it is pos­si­ble that there are alter­nate ways of get­ting things done. This is just what worked for me.

Wel­come To Choose

All telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice is pro­vided by the state-run Ethiopian Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­pany (ETC), so clearly this is the option you are wel­come to choose. Below is a photo of the text mes­sage I received upon set­ting up my cell phone service.

Cell phone service

When I was here last sum­mer, there was a run on SIM cards as there were not enough phone num­bers avail­able to meet the demand. Since then, new num­bers were intro­duced to the sys­tem. I had no prob­lem get­ting a SIM card this time, pay­ing about 160 birr ($13) for it in a shop at the Hilton Hotel.

Cell num­bers start­ing in 0911 are orig­i­nal num­bers. Those start­ing with 0912, 0913, etc., are new num­bers.  I got the cheap­est cell phone offered at a small shop near Meskel Square for 450 birr ($37). Lots of shops offer SIM cards and cell phones, so you should have no prob­lem find­ing either.

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Addi­tional note — Feb 18, 2010: DO NOT BUY YOUR SIM CARD FROM THE HILTON HOTEL!  This turned out to be a mis­take on my part.  The Hilton is noto­ri­ous for ille­gally reg­is­ter­ing new SIM num­bers under the name of an Ethiopian, not the for­eign pur­chaser.  This is con­ve­nient for peo­ple mak­ing short vis­its to the coun­try as they do not need to deal with the paper­work of reg­is­ter­ing the num­ber them­selves.  My cell phone was recently stolen.  Nor­mally in this case, ETC will deac­ti­vate the stolen SIM and give you a new one with the old num­ber for a nom­i­nal fee.  Since the num­ber was not reg­is­tered under my name, I could not recover it.  Go to an ETC office to get a SIM card.  Bring a copy of your pass­port, two ID pho­tos, and a local address and phone num­ber.  I also brought along an Ethiopian friend to help (Thanks, Tigist!).  Some peo­ple are under the impres­sion that you need an Ethiopian res­i­dence card to reg­is­ter a new SIM card.  As of writ­ing this, that is not the case.

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Sim cards come with a few birr of ser­vice and credit can be added with green or blue pre­paid phone cards avail­able at almost every cor­ner store. Use blue cards to add credit to SIM cards with 0911 num­bers and green cards to add credit to 0912 and up num­bers.  They come in denom­i­na­tions of 25, 50, and 100 birr.  In about a month’s time, I’ve used 150 birr of ser­vice mak­ing about 2–3 local calls a day that rarely last over 10 min­utes each.

The pre­paid card will have instruc­tions on how to add credit by call­ing ETC at 909. Even if you don’t under­stand the recorded Amharic prompts, fol­low­ing the instruc­tions printed on the card in Eng­lish will do the trick. You should receive a text mes­sage con­firm­ing that credit has been added to your account.

Cell phone annoyances

As far as I under­stand, adding the new num­bers pushed the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem over capac­ity. About 1/3 of the time I try to place a call, it won’t go through and an auto­mated mes­sage plays offer­ing one of var­i­ous rea­sons why.

Often times, peo­ple I’m work­ing with can­not afford to charge their SIM cards with credit, so they call and imme­di­ately hang up so that I call them back. They will also bor­row other people’s phones to make calls from rather than using the credit on their own SIM card. I don’t have voice mail ser­vice, and no one I know does. I’m not sure if it’s even offered. While in the U.S. I might ignore calls from unknown num­bers to my phone and just lis­ten to the mes­sage later, the com­bi­na­tion of prac­tices and ser­vices here man­date that I pick up all calls.

Inter­net

I had a lot of help from the F9 Photo Blog on get­ting my Apple lap­top con­nected to the inter­net. Please refer to this post on the EVDO inter­net con­nec­tion for addi­tional spec­i­fi­ca­tions and instruc­tion on this ser­vice.  Two con­nec­tions are avail­able through USB modems: CDMA 1X and EVDO.  Most ven­dors I talked to were com­pletely mis­in­formed about the USB modems they are sell­ing and the inter­net con­nec­tions avail­able through them. Many ETC employ­ees were mis­in­formed as well. In addi­tion, few can speak to com­pat­i­bil­ity with Apple com­put­ers, which are not very com­monly used here.

I bought a Huawei USB modem for just over 2,200 birr ($183) at Getu Cen­ter on Bole Rd.  With the help of an Ethiopian friend, I reg­is­tered the device at the ETC office next to Edna Mall for lim­ited EVDO inter­net ser­vice at 480 birr/month ($40) for up to 2GB of band­width usage.

The EVDO con­nec­tion is very new in Ethiopia (intro­duced in the past sev­eral months) and comes in lim­ited and unlim­ited band­width options. The unlim­ited band­width option is exor­bi­tantly expen­sive, so unless you’re open­ing an inter­net cafe or some­thing, go with the lim­ited ser­vice.  The max­i­mum con­nec­tion speed is 2.4 MB/second, though rarely is my con­nec­tion actu­ally over 250 KB/second. I paid for the first month at the ETC office, but sub­se­quent months are paid for with pre­paid cards much like the ones used to add credit to my cell phone ser­vice. The light blue cards for inter­net credit are avail­able at some sta­tion­ary shops and cor­ner stores that adver­tise CDMA/Internet Cards. I got mine at the sta­tion­ary store one floor below the ETC office near Edna Mall.  At the begin­ning of each month, I buy 5 100birr cards and charge my account.

If you don’t charge your account by the 8th of the month, ETC closes the account. I find the con­nec­tion does drop out occa­sion­ally, espe­cially when I am doing things that demand a lot of band­width, like watch­ing videos. Usu­ally, recon­nect­ing after the con­nec­tion was dropped does the trick.

The other option for inter­net ser­vice with a USB modem is the CDMA 1X con­nec­tion, which works through a SIM card with credit added through the same pre­paid cards as the cell phone ser­vice. It is sig­nif­i­cantly slower than the EVDO con­nec­tion and charges by time used, not band­width. On a friend’s 1X con­nec­tion in my first few weeks here, I rarely saw con­nec­tion speeds over 25 KB/second. If I stuck with the 1X con­nec­tion, I would have paid com­pa­ra­bly to what I pay for the EVDO con­nec­tion over the course of a month but would accom­plish much less in the time spent online because of the slow con­nec­tion speed.  If you are in Ethiopia for any sig­nif­i­cant period of time, a 1X con­nec­tion is a waste of time and money.  It’s worth the added haste of get­ting the proper USB modem and reg­is­ter­ing at the ETC office for the faster con­nec­tion with EVDO.