Invited to preside over the launching ceremony of this network, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications denounces “regulatory inadequacies” and accuses the top management of Cameroon Telecommunications of having trampled underfoot the directives of his supervisory authority within the framework of the implementation of said network.
The sky is not so blue between the Camtel and the Minpostel! The connection between the “incumbent mobile telephone operator in Cameroon” and its supervisory authority is visibly made up of interference which makes the line overloaded and less fluid than one would have liked. At the origin of this scrambled connection, the problematic launching of the activities of the mobile network of Cameroon telecommunications called “Blue”. Initially scheduled for Wednesday January 13, 2021, the ceremony announced with great fanfare will finally give birth to a mouse. At least if we stick to the sufficiently deleterious atmosphere that animates the relationship between the two bodies on the eve of said launch.
If Camtel believes it gives all the guarantees to reassure potential subscribers of “Blue” in terms of reliability and security offered by its new baby, the Minpostel, he believes that the offspring is still in its infancy. Anything that mortgages its entry into the deep end of mobile operators already on the market, but also the credibility it claims to enjoy early on.
It is therefore with all these reservations that Minette Libom Li Likeng, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, did not go through four ways to express her disapproval in a letter sent on Monday January 11, 2021 to the general manager of Camtel, Judith Yah Sunday, as reported by our colleagues from the Business in Cameroon specialist information site. In an approach that borders on caution, the government, through the voice of the boss of the Minpostel, deplores “notorious regulatory inadequacies” and the absence of a business plan for the implementation of this mobile network. In other words, Libom Li Likeng refuses to agree to a project that looks like a Cameroonian DIY. Consequently, the former Director of Customs, who received an invitation on January 7, 2021 to preside over the launch of the activities of the much awaited “Blue”, formally recommends its postponement.
Neutrality and transparency
“In a letter received on January 7, 2021, you invite me to chair the launch of the mobile for January 13, 2021, without reporting on the lifting of the reservations made during the meeting of December 16, 2020. All this does not allow no not only to ensure a successful entry of the incumbent into the mobile telephony segment (yet long awaited), but also to reassure players in the sector on the neutrality, transparency, non-discrimination and objectivity of Camtel to manage the de facto monopoly segments (fixed, transport), ”she wrote to Judith Yah Sunday.
In the process, Libom Li Likeng also deplores the failure by Camtel’s top management to comply with government directives, when it was awarded three concessions to operate mobile networks, operate fixed electronic communications, and of an electronic communications transport network, March 4, 2020. Among these directives, the government prescribed “the establishment of an open organizational continuum, with the creation within it of business units, according to each of the operating titles allocated “, recalls Libom Li Likeng who also regrets,” that instead of the mobile business unit “, Judith Yah Sunday preferred” a task force of 170 staff (…) without any details on the missions and aspects related to the management of this unit ”, we learn. As if that were not enough, Camtel’s auditor noted a large number of irregularities, in particular obstructions to the control of the management of the company; the proven immaturity of the company’s projects; breaches of the provisions relating to the appointments of staff by general management, which are likely to “compromise the social climate within the company …”, concludes Minpostel. Enough to shower the ardor of Camtel, already engaged in a campaign to promote the activities of this 4th mobile telephone operator, extolling its service offers in a highly competitive environment.
Ignition delay
Should we conclude that there is a delay in switching on in this new page which was opening for the public telecommunications entity? There are in any case reasons to believe it because if Camtel will continue the development of the fixed telephone and the exploitation of the optical fiber, the big innovation remains the obtaining of a license for the development of the mobile telephone, of which the terms of the concession make it ipso facto, the new mobile telephony operator with authorization to deploy 4G. New missions that go beyond CtPhone, a mobile technology on Cdma and not on Gsma deployed by the company fifteen years ago in partnership with the Chinese firm Huawei which only covers
cities and some peri-urban areas.
Just wait !
Christian TCHAPMI
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