Huawei and ZTE Won $1.6 Billion Network Upgrade Contract:

Ethiopia's state-owned monopoly telecoms network had awarded a huge US$1.6 billion network expansion contract to be split between Huawei and ZTE.

According to reports, Huawei has been allocated a US$700 million contract, which by inference means that ZTE won a larger share worth US$900 million, although that hasn't been confirmed by either company.

The mobile network also has not issued a statement about the contract at the time of writing.

The contract is to boost capacity on the network to 56 million subscribers, reaching 85% of the population, and also deploy LTE services in the capital city, Addis Ababa.

Talks with potential bidders for the expansion contracts started last December, and were understood to have been reduced to the two Chinese suppliers by last month. It was also recently reported that the contract would include the stripping out of decade old Nokia supplied equipment in the capital city.

The government recently rejected calls to break the state monopoly and allow competition into the market, citing the need for higher profits from the telcoms company to subsidise an unrelated railway project