There are many infuriating intrusions of privacy that living in our fair nation entails. A person associating higher value to himself would certainly have frequent exasperation.
From a taxi assistant that pushes one to the side to illegally accommodate one more person on each chair of his mini-bus to a security guard that does not understand the ethical lines of searching, a person would be exposed to multiple events of privacy intrusions. One aspect of the entrenched culture of privacy intrusion comes from ethio telecom.
The tons of promotional texts ethio telecom sends out to its customers are not only annoying, but bothersome at times. Utilising its monopolistic position, the telecom service provider barrages its customers with texts from various organisations advertising lottery draws. A person with deep senses of responsibility to her country might tolerate messages from the famous “8100” service, for this is about the flagship Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). But the blipping would not end there, as there are various services intended to lure money from mobile telephone users.
The fact is that ethio telecom makes money out of this, while the customers do not. The customers are left with the irritation caused by the continuous ringing of their phones. Imagine how disturbing this would be, if one is attending a meeting. More so would it be when one is expecting a vital text message from a family member, a business partner or a decision maker.
Certainly, the utility has to get money to expand infrastructure, universalise its services and upgrade its technologies. Hence, it is justifiable that it ought to diversify its revenue base. But this job should not be done at the expense of the privacy of customers. At least, the customers ought to have the right to choose what type of message they receive. They also ought to be given the chance to select between a service with promotional texts and one without such texts.
In a country where privacy is protected by constitutional provision, seeing a public telecom service provider with no clue to the association of phones and privacy is puzzling. The leaders of ethio telecom seem to have no idea that big multinationals, such as Apple, often get into serious loggerheads with law enforcement authorities over protection of personal data.
As if the privacy intrusions are not enough, ethio telecom is saying it is going to register the identity of our mobile apparatuses, using a technology called Equipment Identity Register (EIR). And the cover it is using is controlling theft, contraband import and loss of national revenue.
It looks like that monopoly is no more a service provider, but a sector regulator. I do not know where the service provider gets the mandate to do all this.
Shouldn’t this be the job of the regulator? Shouldn’t it be the Ethiopian Revenue & Customs Authority (ERCA) that cares about contraband trade, taxation and government revenue?
I often get puzzled about the way things evolve in our country. A telecom service provider that runs inefficient, expensive and sluggish system spends much of its time on devising ways to bring customers with no alternative to run into under its feet. Instead of giving better services and alternatives to its customers, it carves to control the whole value chain from providing services to supplying apparatuses. Not only does it take comfort in intruding the privacy of its customers, but it builds a system that serves the surveillance needs of the authorities.
Under the monopoly of ethio telecom, choice is discarded. It is a feature that gets no place within the decision making process. It is only ethio telecom that has a choice to do whatever it wishes to. Customers, on the other hand, choose from the very choices that the monopoly provides them with. And often times, they are left with none than sticking to the inefficient, intrusive and costly services of the monopoly.
In a world where interconnectivity has become a norm, it confuses me why we are left to suffer with only one service provider. The feeling of helplessness worsens when the frequent privacy intrusions in the form of bulk text messages are accounted. Sadly, there is no way out.
Indeed, it is suffocating to live with a monopoly that does not understand its limits. We may not expect it to operate with a standard that big multinationals operate, but it needs to develop some sort of limits on how far it should advance its interests at the expense of customers.
Nightmarish as this may to seem to a person living in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa or Morocco (countries with multiple service providers), it is a reality for Ethiopians. We live in a world where service providers turn the wheel as they like and even inch to act as regulators. Indeed, it is saddening to see that ours is a nation where state-owned enterprises cherish power beyond limits.
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