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By Mina Yirga - Capital
22 May, 2007
Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation launched a phone directory which was prepared at a cost of 3.9 mln birr.
The directory will be presented in 100,000 hard copies, CD-Roms containing 550,000 fixed line telephone numbers. In addition, the information is posted on www.africaphonebooks.com in three different languages. (Amharic, English, French). The directory incorporates white pages (customers listing), Yellow pages (advertisements) along with country and corporate profiles.
According to Abdurahim Ahemed,Communication Department Head at ETC, the previous procedure followed by the corporation was inefficient and unprofessional besides costing the corporation huge expenses. “Gathering advertisements was not the core business of the corporation and publications were carried out by local companies. We couldn’t carry on with this since it used to cost us 30 to 35mln birr. So the corporation ceased publishing telephone directories for the last eight years. The experience of other countries tells us that such kinds of tasks are carried out by world class directory companies. As a result, this practice was adopted by the corporation to follow suit.”
After contesting international bidders, the French ANYPOL, a firm which has produced national telephone directories for countries worldwide, 27 of which are in Africa, won the bid and contracted for five years to produce the telephone directory with international quality and standards.
According to ETC‘s customers’ segmentation, the major target groups for the telephone directory are business community, Tele centers and NGO’s. “We believe the business community will benefit more than the residential customers. As the saying ‘if you are not in the yellow pages you are not in the business.’ What makes the new telephone directory different is that it gives alternatives to corporate companies which don’t have access to the hard copies with three language choices.” Abdurahim Added.
The telephone directory will be updated every year to contain the all ETC subscribers of fixed lines and the website is planned contain 8 language varieties including Chinese language. The directory will be distributed free of charge after it is imported from Italy where it is printed.