To curb increasing drop in quality: Gov’t rolls out fresh guidelines for telecoms service providers, regulator.

The member of government has among others, challenged the companies to embrace improved collaboration, quicker approach in the maintenance of infrastructures, timelier financial and material investments in improving infrastructure and for the regulator to increasingly better its regulatory efforts.  

The minister gave the prescriptions during a press briefing in Yaounde Friday, October 11.

This was at the end of a two-day working visits to the head offices of the three service providers operating in the country: MTN Cameroon, Orange Cameroun and CAMTEL. 

The visit was flagged off Thursday October 10 with stopovers at MTN and Orange head offices in Douala in the Littoral Region. It ended Friday at CAMTEL headquarters in Yaounde.

Speaking during the press briefing, Minister Li Likeng frowned at what she described as a disturbing rise in the number of complaints received from users about the quality of telecommunications services providers. 

She admitted that the drop in the quality is partly due to industry setbacks that span beyond the jurisdictions of the companies and institutions concern. 

The minister said she embarked on the mission, like similar efforts that she made in April last year after the “Mode Avion” online protest, in a bid to have one-on-one engagement with the services providers to find workable solutions in addressing the worries.

The member of government said before the meetings, the ministry had since last month, been working on the project to tackle the quality drop by notably requesting the regulator to produce a detailed report on the measures that have been implemented to monitor the actions taken by operators to improve the quality of services nationwide.

The expected report from the request, the minister said, were notably details on the level of the implementation of the recommendations made during the April 2023 consultation which the ministry held with the companies.

Multiple challenges 

Minister Li Likeng in her statement during the briefing, stated that the telecom companies are faced with multiple general challenges that span beyond their jurisdictions despite the heavy investments made at their levels.

Despite heavy investments like the announced pumping in of 117 billion FCFA in 2023 and 109.5 billion FCFA planned for 2024 by CAMTEL and similar efforts by the two private companies, the minister said the structures continue facing issues arising notably from instability in electricity supply. 

Such a setback, she said, affects not only technical sites of the companies but also touches data centers and other critical equipment.

The member of government said the companies are also left helpless by difficulties in the supply of fuel for emergency generators at operators’ technical sites especially in rural areas.

Other challenges cited by the minister included recurrent breaks in fibre-optic cables due to uncoordinated civil engineering work and acts of vandalism that disrupts the continuity of services and network availability particularly on key segments of the national fibre optic network.

Minister Li Likeng also cited signal interferences and jamming, stating that such setbacks directly impact the quality of voice calls and data services.

The plethora of challenges faced by the companies, the minister said, place users as the biggest losers mainly through frequent network interruptions, slow internet connections, call drops and poor voice call quality which have become recurrent issues. 

Timely, smarter actions recommended 

In a bid to provide effective and lasting solutions to the worries, Minister Li Likeng dished out individual guidelines to all three service providers and the service regulator.

The guidelines which individually correspond to the lapses recorded by the various institutions, ranged from both immediate and medium term. 

To MTN Cameroon, she also instructed the company to optimise the performance of the fibre made available by CAMTEL.

She said MTN Cameroon has significant responsibilities in terms of the quality of service during the period still covered by the contract between the two bodies. 

The minister prescribed as immediate solutions to the company, the strengthening of the education of subscribers about the various services offered by the company “in order to maximize the usage of available services and increase customer satisfaction”. 

She also challenged the company to embrace the putting in place of a system to measure users experience, enabling regular feedback from subscribers on the quality of services provided. 

Similar guidelines for Orange Cameroun

The minister gave similar guidelines handed MTN Cameroon to Orange Cameroun. 

The company was on an immediate basis, instructed to improve on the real-time monitoring of its sites to better anticipate and resolve network performance problems before they impact users. 

The company instructed to deploy external tools enabling subscribers to directly send through their experiences about the quality of services which provides a clear and precise view of customer expectations.

The minister equally challenged the company to increase the capacity of the across the internet flow and better customer complaint management as well as optimize the performance of the dark fibre made available by CAMTEL.

CAMTEL urged to boost equipment system

CAMTEL received guidelines to, on immediate basis, strive to deploy physical surveillance mechanisms to protect external infrastructure that are facing risks of getting damaged.

The company was also told to undertake the transparent pricing of its services, with the minister challenging the institution to ensure that its demands are not only competitive but also cost-oriented, in accordance with current regulations in force.

In the medium term, the state company was instructed to “increase the number of transmission routes to international connectivity, including terrestrial through other countries, as well as satellite links”. 

Regulator also told to step up fight 

The activities of regulatory body, the ART also came under review following several lapses reported at its end.

Minister Li Likeng, in a short-term basis, challenged the institution to “strengthen the system for monitoring operators’ specifications, through the introduction of automated evaluation tools to measure network performance in real time”.

This, the minister said, is to enable the company to quickly detect any malfunctions or shortcomings.

The body was also tasked to boost the cooperation it has with operators by revitalizing the platform for consultation to improve coordination in the management of shared infrastructure like the fibre optics and to encourage the pooling of resources to improve the quality of service.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3259 of Monday October 14, 2024