No Texting for Millennium Crowd

TeleGeography -- Ethiopia will have 1.2 million mobile phones available for sale to the hundreds of thousands of tourists and Ethiopians living abroad who are expected to visit the country to celebrate the Ethiopian millennium, which falls on 12 September.

Ethiopia is the only country in the world to have preserved the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox faith-based Julian calendar, which is seven years behind the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of the world. Both the UN and the African Union have recognised the Ethiopian millennium as a unique African occasion, dubbing it the ‘African Millennium’.

Expected guests include African heads of state and musicians Beyonce Knowles and Michael Jackson. According to Ethiopia Telecommunication Corporation (ETC), the handsets will afford tourists access to various special services including audio and video data.

DOWNSIDE:
Post 2005 election, SMS messaging systems in Ethiopia were deliberately shut off by the government in an attempt to stop people from communicating.

More details of the chaos on Ethiopiamillenium.com.

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