(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroon’s minister of post and telecommunication (Minpostel), Minette Libom Li Likeng, has made public the audit of the quality of services provided by telecom operators in Cameroon. These are MTN Cameroon, Orange Cameroon, Nexttel and Camtel.

 "The results of the audit confirmed the ongoing degradation of the quality of the services of all the operators due to their non-compliance with their specification and the poor technical support by the sector’s regulator," the telecommunication minister declared. From a synthetic point of view, the audit which was conducted by the Swiss Cybercom Group revealed a lack of investments while the number of subscribers rose, technical shortcomings in terms of equipment installation and setting (non-compliant with international standards and non-respect of regular settings for some network equipment) as well as a non-optimized sizing of networks.

All these have for consequences: bad network availability, lack of emergency services in case of external disruptions and inaccurate customer database. "We noticed that around 10% of the data in the telecom operators’ base is not trustworthy. This is a big deal! Which is why the quality of services is so bad,” Minette Libom Li Likeng said.

The official also indicated that in regards to 3G coverage, the average standard accepted worldwide is 3.8 whereas in Yaoundé it is 1.6, 2.1 in Douala and 2.8 in other towns. Meanwhile, the average in some African countries (Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt) it is 3.5. In sight of this, the Minpostel has given six months to all operators to correct all the shortcomings identified by the audit firm.

Sylvain Andzongo