EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to the Woyanne regime’s stranglehold on the telecom industry, Ethiopia has the lowest mobile phone usage in Africa. Anarchic Somalia has more cellphone users per capita than Ethiopia. ETC is run by a Woyanne cadre named DebreTsion GebreMichael who doesn’t know any thing about technology. His primary focus is blocking web sites and jamming radio programs with Chinese help.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Telecommunications Corp (ETC) plans to boost mobile subscribers to 15 million in two years, from 2.2 million now [out of 80 million people], using $1.5 billion from China’s ZTE Corp O763.HK, the Ethiopian firm said on Wednesday.

[In South Africa, that has a population of 47 million, there are 35 million mobile phone subscribers. Even Uganda, with 1/3rd of the population Ethiopia has, the are 6 million subscribers.]

ZTE, China’s second-largest telecoms gear maker, agreed in July to build a national network in the Horn of Africa country. It is building a $5.2 million plant in northern Ethiopia to make handsets, and industry sources say it will also set up a CDMA network with capacity for 2.4 million Ethiopian subscribers.

Abdurahim Ahmed, head of communications for ETC, said the company also planned to increase the country’s number of fixed telephone lines to 4.4 million by 2010 from 1.1 million now.

Chinese telecoms gear makers such as ZTE have made strides in recent years into more mature markets, and have long been established in emerging areas such as India and Africa.

(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Daniel Wallis)