Etiopia: la copertura

Cosa vogliono dire i numeri di Etiopia

Contano due numeri e solo uno è quello che citano tutti. La velocità tipica, 21 Mbps, dice com'è un buon momento.

Il decimo percentile, 5 Mbps, è quello che vale la pena leggere. È la velocità nel decimo peggiore della giornata, quando la cella sopra la stazione è piena e tutti intorno a te ci sono dentro. Un paese con mediana alta e pavimento basso funziona benissimo, fino al momento in cui ti serve davvero.

Se il viaggio dipende da videochiamate o hotspot, pianifica sul dato delle ore di punta e non su quello tipico.

Cosa succede in Etiopia quando la rete è congestionata

La congestione non è un guasto, è un martedì sera. La domanda è cosa può farci la tua eSIM, e per quasi tutte le eSIM da viaggio la risposta è niente: un accordo all'ingrosso per paese, una rete, e nessuna via d'uscita se non comprare una seconda eSIM da qualcun altro mentre sei in mezzo alla strada.

Qui il traffico Orbislo passa da Ethio Telecom e Safaricom. Quando la rete su cui sei peggiora ti spostiamo su un'altra, a metà viaggio, senza che tu lo chieda, e te lo diciamo dopo invece di interromperti sul momento.

Etiopia: operatori mobili

• Ethio Telecom: The state-owned operator ended its 2025/26 financial year with 90.12 million customers in total and 72.09 million active mobile subscribers, of whom 51.53 million were active mobile data users.
• Ethio Telecom: Ethio Telecom ran 10,613 mobile sites at the end of 2025/26, including 454 rural solution sites for places with little or no grid power. It added 603 sites that year, 195 of them rural, covering 117 woredas and 492 villages.
• Ethio Telecom: Ethio Telecom launched VoLTE in December 2023 at the same price as ordinary calls with no subscription fee. Calls need a VoLTE-capable phone and a 4G or 5G SIM, and the operator says VoLTE also supports roaming.
• Safaricom Ethiopia: On 22 May 2021 Ethiopia awarded a nationwide licence to a consortium led by Safaricom with Vodafone, Vodacom, CDC, Sumitomo and DFC, ending the decades-long state monopoly. The group committed to invest 8 billion US dollars over ten years.
• Safaricom Ethiopia: Safaricom Ethiopia switched on in Addis Ababa on 6 October 2022 with 2G, 3G and 4G in 11 cities. Its licence required 25 percent population coverage, and it shares infrastructure and interconnects with Ethio Telecom.
• Safaricom Ethiopia: By 31 March 2026 Safaricom Ethiopia had 13.6 million customers active within 90 days, a network of 3,504 sites and 4G reaching 59 percent of the population, up from almost 50 percent and 3,141 sites a year earlier.

Etiopia: il 5G

• Ethio Telecom began pre-commercial 5G on six sites in Addis Ababa on 9 May 2022 under a temporary spectrum approval from the Ethiopian Communications Authority, with Huawei deploying the network.
• Commercial 5G from Ethio Telecom went live on 9 September 2023 across 145 sites in Addis Ababa, after trials in Addis Ababa and Adama. A 5G-capable handset is required.
• By the end of its 2025/26 year Ethio Telecom's 5G reached 33 cities on 340 sites, with seven cities and 25 sites added during the year. Outside those cities, service falls back to 4G.

Etiopia: note sulla rete

• Ethio Telecom's 4G reached 1,200 towns and 82.23 percent of the population in 2025/26, up from 70.83 percent. Geographic 4G coverage rose from 21.06 to 36.29 percent, so most of the land area still has no 4G.
• Only 3,279 of Ethio Telecom's mobile sites were connected by fibre by 2025/26. That is 96 percent of sites in Addis Ababa but just 19 percent in the regions, so capacity outside the capital is thinner.
• Unstable grid power is a known weak point. In 2025/26 Ethio Telecom installed 867 hybrid power systems at base stations, 215 new solar sites and 225 backup generators to keep masts running through outages.
• Ethio Telecom's internet capacity reached 4.3 Tb/s in 2025/26 after adding 1.8 Tb/s during the year, with its internet gateway at 2,040 Gb/s and content caches from five partners at 2,062 Gb/s.
• Ethio Telecom added 10.2 million lines of capacity in 2025/26, lifting total mobile network capacity from 104.8 million to 115.1 million, while 5G capacity reached 1.4 million after a net addition of about 81,000.