Authorities in yet another West African country are responding to consumer dissatisfaction over mobile operator prices and quality of service (QoS). This time it’s happening in Cameroon, whose mobile operators have been instructed to modify off-net and on-net prices within two months.
This comes as a result of subscriber protests earlier this year about the quality of telecom services in the country. As we reported at the time, subscribers coordinated protests during which they switched on aeroplane mode at specific times simultaneously.
Consumer dissatisfaction led to a crisis meeting with the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Minette Libom, at which all operators promised to enhance their services and laid out plans to do so. Operators at the time had two weeks to compensate subscribers for any lost data due to network outages. In addition, in May CamTel, MTN, Orange and Viettel were fined just under US$10 million for poor quality of service.
News service ITWeb Africa says that Libom has now ordered price adjustments for postpaid, prepaid and promotional offer subscriptions. She has also said that the operators would be subject to sanctions for non-compliance. The country’s telecoms regulator has been given a year to monitor changes.
Regional QoS issues have been very much in the news recently in West Africa. We reported yesterday that the four main mobile operators in the Nigerien market had been fined by the regulatory authority, ARCEP for failing to meet their QoS commitments. In Burkina Faso, meanwhile, pricing and quality issues have led to a call for a boycott campaign against the country’s three main operators.
