in 2005, debretsion was appointed director of the ethiopian information and communication development agency (eicda). as director, debretsion worked to improve the public service activity by launching the public service capacity building program (pscap). in 2007, debretsion launched $1.5 billion infrastructure project with zte which expanded the network capacity to 30 million (from 6.5 million in 2007 and 1.35 million in 2001), constructed 10,000 km of fibre cable. by 2012 ethiopia had constructed 16,000 km of fibre cables and had voice cellular coverage at 64% of the country. in 2012, debretsion was appointed as the minister of communications and information technology. in 2012, debretstion announced that a $1.6 billion deal had been reached with huawei, ericsson and zte to significantly expand the capacity of the communication infrastructure. as of september 2016 project has been progressing on schedule. 4g cellular service is now available in addis ababa. the ultimate goal of the project is to increase cellular coverage to 100% and to increase the capacity to 50 million.