(Business in Cameroon) – The Cameroonian government is raising concerns about the widening gap between soaring mobile traffic and stagnating investments by telecom operators, warning that this mismatch is threatening the quality of the country’s network.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting on July 31, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Minette Libom Li Likeng cited findings from the Telecommunications Regulatory Board and independent experts. She stated that mobile operators’ poor performance is mainly due to internal issues, especially underinvestment.
The minister pointed out that operator investments are “not aligned with traffic growth,” and that this is made worse by “poor maintenance of equipment” and “inadequate infrastructure upgrades.” These shortcomings have led to degraded service quality, marked by frequent service disruptions, uneven territorial coverage, recurring congestion, and unstable data speeds due to overloaded and aging infrastructure.
Another issue raised was the lack of infrastructure sharing between telecom operators. This failure to pool resources complicates equipment management and hinders the efficient use of technical assets.
In response to these service failures, the regulatory agency fined Orange Cameroun and MTN Cameroon a total of CFA2.6 billion on July 2. The penalties relate to network coverage rates falling below required thresholds and pricing violations, including non-functional opt-out codes for value-added services.
In their defense, the operators highlighted their financial efforts. Orange Cameroun stated it has invested about CFA1,500 billion in the country over the past 25 years. MTN Cameroon reported having paid CFA155 billion to the state in 2024 and plans to invest CFA62 billion in 2025.
Despite these figures, the government believes the current level of investment falls short of what is needed to meet fast-growing demand and sustainably improve network performance for millions of Cameroonian subscribers.
