Ethio-Telecom announced it has earned $632.99 million during the first half-year of this Ethiopian fiscal year which began on July 8, 2022.Briefing journalists on Thursday CEO of the Ethio-Telecom Ferehiwot Tamiru said the revenue saw a 96 percent increase from the plan set for the period.

Subscribers to Ethio-Telecom’s mobile phone- based financial services, known as Telebirr, launched in May 2021, have grown to 27.2 million out of its 70 million total subscribers, 15.1 percent increase compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year, Tamiru told the media.

She indicated that the company was able to obtain 166.1 billion birr transactions in six months and earn 82.5 million birr through Telebirr.

Tamiru confirmed that the earned income has seen a 19.9 percent increase compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.

The CEO stated that there is an increase of 5.62 billion birr adding that $64.8 million has been obtained from services that generate foreign currency.

According to her, mobile voice accounts for 47.4 percent of the total revenue, while data and internet contribute 28 percent, international business shares 8.4 percent, value added service accounts for 6.5 percent, infrastructure shares 2.2 percent and the remaining 7.5 percent comes from other sources.

The revenue was earned despite several challenges, the CEO said, adding, service outages due to security, fiber and copper cable cut and vandalism, land acquisition delay, foreign currency shortage and rising inflation, commercial power acquisition delay and interruption, telecom fraud and supply shortage and contractors efficiency among the challenges.

The number of Ethio-telecom subscribers has reached 70 million, it was indicated.