Safaricom Ethiopia Begins Customer Network Pilot

Safaricom Ethiopia on Monday announced it has begun a large-scale customer pilot of its network in Dire Dawa City as the company’s phased city-by-city regional network roll-out ahead of its national launch.

Safaricom Ethiopia said the customer pilot in Dire Dawa will be on 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. Customers will be able to purchase SIM cards and choose their preferred numbers on Safaricom Ethiopia’s 07 prefix.

“We are excited to begin our customer pilot for Safaricom Ethiopia’s network and services in Dire Dawa. This is an important milestone as we begin opening the network to customers in order to test the end-to-end readiness of technical and commercial ahead of the full network launch. We will continue to share updates, as we extend the network and customer pilot across other regions towards national launch in October 2022,” Anwar Soussa, CEO, of Safaricom Ethiopia, said.

The customer network pilot in Dire Dawa is part of Safaricom’s Ethiopia plan to switch on its network and services in 25 cities by April 2023. Customers in Dire Dawa will be able to use data services, make calls and send SMS to Safaricom Ethiopia and Ethio Telecom customers and make international calls worldwide.

Customers will also have the option of accessing customer care services from the call centre in their preferred language by dialling 700 to speak to the customer experience agents.

The Safaricom Ethiopia SIM cards will be available in branded shops or souks. The SIM cards will come with a welcome offer of Data, Voice and SMS for customers to test and experience the network for one month. In addition to the welcome package, customers will also be able to actively purchase airtime vouchers from branded shops or souks to recharge their airtime balance to continue using services on the network.

Three shops in Kezira, Meskelegna and Cornell areas will be available to the public for customer registration, purchase of devices and dedicated customer support.