Cameroon mobile penetration rate rises from 9.8 to 71% between 2004 and 2014

The level of mobile phone ownership by the Cameroonian population exploded over the past 10 years. Indeed, in a recent interview with the Government daily, the Director General of the telecommunications regulation Agency (ART), Jean Louis Beh Maru revealed that the rate of penetration of this tool of communication within the population rose from 9.8 to 71% between 2004 and the first quarter of 2014.

This mobile penetration rate, which, according to Mr. Beh Mengué, is calculated on the basis of the number of actually activated SIM cards; in the country and not on the basis of the total number of subscribers to mobile telephony to the population has certainly increased by the end of 2014 especially with the arrival on the Cameroonian market last September, of a third mobile operator.

Indeed, since the launch of its activities on September 18, 2014, Vietnamese Viettel, which operates under the brand name Nexttel, already had 400,000 subscribers by end of November, revealed the Cameroonian Minister of posts and telecommunications, Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, in defending the budget for his Department in the National Assembly.

Today, Cameroon has officially more than 16 million subscribers to mobile phone, in a population of 20 million people. By 2015, Camtel, the public operator of the Telecom monopoly in the fixed segment, will also activate its mobile licence, thus becoming the fourth operator after MTN, Orange and Nexttel.