The communication services that include telephone, telegram, telex and postal services are provided and operated by Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation and Ethiopian Postal Services. According to the Federal constitution the rehabilitation, expansion and improvement of telecommunications and postal services and their respective infrastructures are the responsibilities of these autonomous state-owned organizations.

The switching system of the Region's telecommunications network consists of manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic exchanges. In 1997, there were 127 manual, 13 automatic and 72 semi-automatic exchanges in the Region (The Economy of Oromia: A perspective for Development, 1999). In the same year, there are a total of 30 pay stations and rural radio call (RRC) centers. The same source has also indicated that, there were 242 towns with telephones serving 24310 customers connected to direct exchange lines.

According to CSA report (2000) on Transport and communications the Region had 32376 apparatus and 29956 total telephone lines in 1998/99. This implies that 92.5 percent of total capacity was utilized.

Similar to other regions, postal services in Oromiya are provided through post office classified as permanent, regular agent and agent. Where such offices have not been established, the postman delivers the mail. In line with this classification, the Region is served by 41 permanent, 30 regular agent and 122 agent post offices as well as by an unspecified number of postmen (The Economy of Oromiya, 1999).

Arsi, Borena and North Shewa, with one post office serving over 139,000 inhabitants, are zones with the lowest postal service. West Harerge has the highest services with one post office serving about 65,000 inhabitants.

When the number of post offices in Oromiya is compared with the population size, presently one post office serving over 100,000 inhabitants (The Economy of Oromiya, 1999). This figure is very large by international standards and hampers the day-to-day correspondence and efficient flow of information to and from the Region. This calls for the need for increasing the number of post offices in the Region.

According to the study carried out by the Ethiopian Roads Authority, the rural population travel 6 hours on average to reach the next all-weather road everyday in this country. The same could also hold true for Oromia. Though the advantages and benefits derived from roads are very high, the road infrastructure in the region is not well expanded. As per the available data there are 2,105 kms of asphalt, 2,304 kms of feeder (gravel) and 6,106 km rural roads amounting to a total of 10,515 km in 1994. Based on this data the road density for the region is 29.2 per 1,000 km2, and 0.44 km per 1,000 people. These indicators show that the road distribution is very low compared to the African average, where the road density is more than 50 km per 1000 km2 and the road population ratio is 0.61 km per 1000 people. The road density in Oromia is slightly better compared to the national road density of 28 km per 1000 km2, where the road population ratio is below that of national level of 0.46 km per 1000 population.

Although significant effort has been made by the regional government to create access to road infrastructure, the road distribution has remained largely uneven, where Arsi has the largest share and North Shewa the smallest.

Trunk and link roads in the region are administered by the Ethiopian Road Authority whereas most of rural roads are under the prerogatives of the Oromia Rural Road Authority. Although encouraging efforts are underway in rehabilitating and upgrading existing trunk and link roads as part of the Road Sector Development Program, most of the roads located in rural Oromia and administered by ERA are neglected lacking sustainable maintenance as the result of which most of them have reached a level where rendering appropriate transport service has virtually become impossible. Therefore, ERA should either carryout timely maintenance of these roads or transfers them to the region with necessary resources.

As it has been stated above, the Regional Government has been allocating substantial resources for the expansion of road, acknowledging its pivotal role in accelerating socio-economic development, particularly in the rural areas. However, the strategy that was pursued in expanding the infrastructure was not effective, especially when viewed in the light of increasing demand for road and limited resource capacity of the region to adequately address this demand. In the past seven years an average of Birr 239.7 and 476.6 thousand was being invested annually to build one kilometer of rural road by own force and private contractors, respectively. This approach is expensive and beyond resource capacity of the region to meet the large transportation needs of the population. In recognition of this fact, limited efforts are being undertaken to introduce cheaper road construction approach such as labor-based technology, which is still costing about 118,000 birr per kilometer. Although the initiative is commendable in terms achieving lower cost road construction technology, it is yet important to review the approach in view of enhancing its cost effectiveness, durability and sustainability.

Hence, it is also vital to look into other better options of road construction and maintenance which gives room for more community participation and utilization of appropriate and affordable technologies through building the capacity of aanaas. Moreover, it is also important to contract out larger road constructions to the private contractors and shift the focus of Oromia Rural Roads Authority mainly to rehabilitation and maintenance of rural roads. In addition to this, it is essential to establish an autonomous regional body to monitor the quality and standard of road and other construction works in order to ensure sustainability and longevity of the infrastructures.