ABSTRACT
Until the latter part of the 20th century, telecommunications had been considered as a natural monopoly with the state seen as the only capable entity to invest on and govern critical communication infrastructure. However, widespread privatization and liberalization policies that accompanied neoliberal shifts in the United States and Britain changed this line of thinking. Subsequent adoptions of legislations like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States that “let anyone enter any communications business” and “let any communications business compete in any market against any other” opened the telecommunication market for private ownership. As with other neoliberal policies, these trends in the global north had significant influences in telecommunications governance in the rest of the world. A rare exception to this practice, Ethiopia’s telecommunications industry is characterized by a vertically integrated market run by a state-owned enterprise outside the realm of competition. This proposed chapter provides a political economic vis-à-vis historical overview of the state-owned telecommunication enterprise Ethio-Telecom – the oldest Public Telecommunications Operator (PTO) in Africa. Through an analysis of secondary documents that include company profiles, institutional reports, and press archives, the chapter reconstructs the natural monopoly origins of Ethio-Telecom and outlines current debates of regulation/deregulation. In doing so, it highlights processes and stakeholders involved in state-sponsored telecommunications infrastructure development from 1894 to the present day, with particular emphasis on the role of the World Bank and, more recently, China.
