It appears the new Ethio-telecom tariff, that is discussed on my previous post(link), has two drawbacks for internet services. The first concerns users of the EV-DO internet service, especially the Internet Cafes, which are the primary means of internet access for many:
Ethio-Telecom stopped making unlimited EVDO Internet access available to customers on Friday, April 1, 2011.
The announcement of the revised packages and new products was made on Wednesday, March 30, by the service provider at a press conference held by Abdurahim Ahmed, manager of external communications, and Jean Michel Latute, CEO, both from Ethio-Telecom.
The new EVDO packaging and pricing system does away with the former unlimited service package. Instead, it offers packages of one, two, and four gigabytes at monthly charges of 300 Br, 500 Br, and 700 Br, respectively. Once this runs out, customers must pay 35 cents per megabyte of use.
The former unlimited EVDO service package of 4,000 Br per month allowed the customers of the Internet café managed by Zelalem Belay to see and download unlimited amounts of software, pictures, and videos.
However, even the comparatively cheaper 4GB package will cost the café more, according to Zelalem.
“The monthly charge for the package, which amounts to around 18 cents per megabyte, may seem cheap, but many of our customers download various materials that take up a lot of memory,” he told Fortune. “With this new tariff package, we must restrict our users’ ability to download memory exhaustive programmes or charge them a combined price system for the time spent and data transfer rate.”
Read more: Addis Fortune’s article – ‘Ethio-Telecom Limits EVDO Internet Access’
There is also problem with the ‘CDMA(2000) 1X data only’ internet service. But this one is caused by Ethio-telecom’s unwillingness to abide by its own tariff rates. Though the tariff listed below is still published on Ethio telecom’s website, the company continues to charge according to the previous rates. In other words, the ‘Peak hours’ rates listed below are applying to the ‘Off Peak hours’ to date.
– Peak hours from 7am to 9pm, except for Sunday and public holidays. – Off peak hours 9 PM – 7 AM + Sunday + public holidays
The screen shot is from Ethio-telecom site ‘Residential Tariffs’ page, accessed on April 8/11 – (Link).
I like it this program
Our homeland serive provider the tarrif change they had made may be necessary for the timebeing but in the future service from client capacity perspective would be available. Please email to me when some new action made.
Aye …Tele
Aye…woyane