Telebirr and its digital monopoly in Ethiopia starting from 2021

Telebirr and its digital monopoly began in baby steps back in May 2021, when the  mobile payment and digital wallet service “Telebirr” was  launched  Ethiopia’s state-owned operator Ethio Telecom .

Telebirr announced that it has over 30 million subscribers,  prior to the digital fuel payment  arrangement tell which was enforced by the state government ; this administered regulation would bring all of Ethiopian car owners, drivers  to be part of telebirr , the fact that the fuel industry is one of the national level primary cash transaction sector will make Telebirr the heart of the day to day digital transactions made in Ethiopia.

Telebirr and its digital monopoly cause and effects

 

Ethio telecom (the state-owned telecom) has  put this digital wallet to use on 2021 and some haw it has its technical objections from some Ethiopian Software Engineers stating  that the development of the application is not secured enough  regarding to cyber safety to be on national base use and process this much of traffic ,despite the oppositions the system got acceptable by the society with no time and manages to score a high number of subscribes with no time , telebirr has processed loans higher  that all the 30 Banks added together did last year

The reasons for Telebirr and its digital monopoly this much of acceptability is that the state -owned telecom is running it and the publicly held secret ; the governmental privileges provided to support its fast development ,even more its single existence on the sector , this actually  was evidenced when the federal government of Ethiopia put all digital money service providers companies request for license on hold  right after the Telebirr gets to business and let Telebirr take the top of the track with no competitors,

The other main reason is that the  slow development of the second telecom company in Ethiopia  (Safaricom) , safaricom was expected to start its main telecom operations as planed and expanded its settlement to the digital money services too but  because of  the delay on integration the company is still enabled to join the the sector well enough  and provide more choice for the customers.

Ethio telecom , its product Telebirr and its digital monopoly now has all the play filed for its own with no up coming competitor and this has benefited the company by gaining filthy profit since there is no other side company to put in consideration during formation of services fees  , the customers on the other hand are now being a victim of a monopolized  system with no choices being offered on the services nor on the requested service charges.

 

The newly administered on the digital fuel payment arrangement is also mainly taken care of by using telebrr iapplication(Telebirr and its digital monopoly)  which makes the customers devoted subscribers with no side way to pick and even more it  making the way a cold high hill for the companies whom are planning and  trying to fit in to this sector including Safaricom(the second telecom company)