Camrail wants to interconnect its passenger stations with fibre optics from North to South

Cameroon Railways (Camrail), franchise holder of the Cameroonian railway, plans to connect all its passenger stations with fibre optics from Douala to Ngaoundéré, in northern Cameroon by way of Yaoundé, the country's capital. This was revealed in the call for expressions of interest recently launched by the rail company to conduct a feasibility study for the project.

For the time being, "The issue isn't the study. The issue is to know of the project can be achieved and under what conditions? From this point of view, the study will show us the legal constraints that could impact the project's feasibility," said an internal source at Camrail when asked about the regulations governing the use of fibre optics in Cameroon (particularly in interurban areas), as this technology is exclusively the right of Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel), the public telecommunications provider.

Since December 18, 2013, Cameroon's public service electricity provider, AES Sonel, has been hit with a 50 million FCfa fine by the Telecommunications Regulations Agency (TRA) "for operating an independent, private network without authorisation."

At Camrail, company heads stated that the fibre optics were put in place for internal purposes in keeping with applicable regulations. However, the latter admit that they wanted to use whatever margins were allowed under those regulatory guidelines to explore other uses such as facilitating the travel of their passengers by providing them with internet access on the train or in station waiting rooms as the company intended.