Camtel’s Performance Under Review – Again
Camtel’s Performance Under Review – Again
By Vaugh O’Grady, Developing Telecoms
May 22, 2025
The long-running story of service quality issues in Cameroon rumbles on with news that the country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Board (ART) has initiated a new restricted tender for an audit of Cameroon’s national fibre optic network.
This move, which apparently took place on 12 May but is only now being widely reported, comes amid persistent criticism over the quality of telecom services across the nation.
State-run Camtel, which owns and manages the country’s terrestrial optical fibre network, estimated at 12,000 kilometres or more, appears to be the main focus of what will be a six-month-long XAF350 million (about US$602,106) operation, which aims to assess the performance and integrity of the fibre optic network.
This isn’t the first time Camtel, which manages the network, handling its maintenance and reselling access to other operators, has been under fire. While operators Orange Cameroon and MTN Cameroon manage their own mobile infrastructure, they rely largely on Camtel’s backbone for data transmission and interconnectivity. However, various news outlets say that operators Orange and MTN frequently accuse Camtel of causing outages and disruptions affecting their subscribers.
Its less than a year since the regulator published, in September 2024, an audit on the Camtel network’s management, following repeated complaints over mobile service quality. It described an infrastructure “in a state of ongoing degradation, with current maintenance conditions needing reassessment”. Electricity supply, fuel procurement and frequent breaks in fibre optic cables were highlighted.
The latest audit will, it is hoped, assess the current operational status of Camtel’s fibre infrastructure, identify technical bottlenecks, and propose steps to improve network performance and reliability.
The continuing news about these issues is a little surprising given our report in January this year that Camtel had revealed a budget of XAF326.2 billion (US$514.7 million) for 2025 to upgrade its network infrastructure and improve service quality, along with a strategic roadmap to steward its evolution to 2027.
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