Libette Minette Libom Li Likeng, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, convened a crisis meeting with all mobile operators in the aftermath of the #ModeAvion237 protests earlier this year in April, which saw thousands of citizens demonstrate against what they saw as unacceptable service quality from the country's top mobile operators MTN Cameroon, Orange Cameroon, CamTel, and Viettel.
The protest, which was organized under the hashtag #ModeAvion237, gathered traction online. As a form of protest, mobile customers across the country switched their handsets to flight mode, essentially disconnecting all analogue voice and digital data services between 12pm and 2pm local time.
Persistent network disruptions, a high cost of connection across the country, and the arbitrary deduction of SMS, airtime, and data bundles were the main causes of the protest movement. Operators were granted two weeks to reimburse users for any lost data because of network interruptions as a result of the demonstrations. In addition, $10 million in fines were imposed on CamTel, MTN, Orange, and Viettel for providing subpar service.
Price Adjustments
For subscriptions to promotional offers, postpaid plans, and prepaid plans, the Ministry mandated price reductions. In order to avoid penalties for non-compliance, the Agency for the Regulation of Telecommunications has been assigned the responsibility of overseeing and ensuring that operators sincerely implement the pricing modifications within a year.
Quality of mobile services
The quality of mobile services has long been a contentious matter in the region. All four of the leading mobile service providers in Niger, namely Airtel, Zamani, Moov Africa, and Niger Telecoms, received fines from the neighboring nation.
4.32 billion CFA francs ($7.3 million) in fines were levied by the Nigerien telecoms regulatory body as a result of operators' failure to uphold their quality of service agreements. Zamani, Airtel, Niger Telecoms, and Moov Africa each received fines of 1.36 billion CFA francs, 1.35 billion CFA francs, and 402.5 million CFA francs, respectively.