Minister calls for reduction in phone call rates

The Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, has urged the General Manager of the Cameroon Telecommunications Company, CAMTEL, David Nkoto Emane, work for a general reduction in the rates charged for telephone calls and internet services in Cameroon.

The Minister made the call after receiving the Optical Fiber Landing Station on September 4 at Batoke, Limbe, while presiding at the official reception of the Optical Fiber Landing Station.

The station, constructed by the West Arica Cable Systems, WACS, was initially owned by MTN Cameroon. But the Government paid FCFA 14 billion to acquire the facility whose handing-over documents by MTN to Government were effected in Yaounde last July 24.

The Limbe station is going to upgrade Cameroon’s optical fibre services with an information transmission capacity of 5.2 terabytes per second on a 40 gigabyte bandwidth. The Limbe facility will greatly augment the speed at which digitally routed information is transmitted via the telephone or internet in Cameroon.

The landing station in Limbe, the Minister stated, comes to add to the one in Douala, the SAT-3 landing station, built in 2002.

These two stations or hubs in Limbe and Douala are those that link or connect Cameroon to an international optical fibre cable lines that inter-connect different continents. These lines are submarine cable lines that travel round the world using the sea floor as their routes. Thus, the Batoke station is the hub that links Cameroon to an underwater optical fiber cable line.

The optical fibre cable lines, technologically speaking, transmit digital information faster than telephone and internet signals that are beamed via satellites.

It is for the above reason that Minister Biyiti asked the GM of CAMTEL to ensure that Cameroonians start enjoying calls at lower rates than they are at the moment. He remarked that prices of calls and internet services in Cameroon have been high, compared to other countries in Africa.

The Minister also urged the GM to ensure that all the telephony companies in Cameroon are accorded an equitable access to the Limbe landing station’s potentials.

The GM, in his address earlier on, announced that the town of Limbe will, as a result of the Batoke station, benefit from the availability of wifi internet.

He added that the village of Bakingili and neighbouring localities will soon have CAMTEL’s CTphone network coverage. He underscored the advantages that the Limbe station will offer while stressing on the possibilities of cheaper internet and telephone services in the days ahead.

Both the Minister and the GM of CAMTEL agreed that the acquisition of the Limbe WACS Station was evidence of the Head of State’s drive to make Cameroon an emerging nation by 2035.

Nkoto Emane asserted that there is no buoyant economy today whose success doesn’t depend on a fast telecommunication network, adding that CAMTEL’s role was to ensure proper management and exploitation of the landing station.

The Government Delegate to the Limbe City Council, Andrew Motanga, thanked the Minster and the Government for choosing Limbe to host the Landing Station.