5.5Million Cameroonians have telephone access

5.5Million Cameroonians have telephone access
APA – Douala, (Cameroon) More than 5 million Cameroonians ;just over 40 percent of the population nation’s population have access to fixed or mobile telephone service, it as revealed Thursdays, by the Telecommunications Regulation Agency(ART).

These statistics are current for the period until December 31 2007 and are for the three telecom operators in Cameroon, including the public company Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL) which holds two licenses for the exploitation of fixed-lie and mobile telephony.

In addition, the two multinationals operating only in the mobile telephone sector, which are, the Franco-British company ORANGE and the South-African multinational , Mobile Telephone Network (MTN).

The General Director of ART, Jean-Louis Beh Mengue, declared that “the upgrade to an eight-digit numbering systems six months ago offers new opportunities for the development of telecommunications in Cameroon”.

This new numbering, he explained, which has a capacity of 80 million lines, would be operational until 2030.

ART does the preclude the arrival of new operators on to the market, especially in the mobile telephone sector, plans to enforce a cleaning up of the market with sanctions meted out to un-registered VSAT operators.

The 2008 action plan gives a special place on the launching of the space segment, the effective sharing of infrastructure, as well as the lowering of telecommunications costs.

At this moment, one minute of communications costs around 180 francs CFA on average, or 200 FCFA during peak hours and 160 FCFA during off-peak hours.

The price for text messaging (SMS) on mobile phones remains unchanged at 60 francs CFA.

According to various sources, the numbers of mobile service subscribers stands at 5 millions against 400,000 for the number of landline subscribers.