Viettel Cameroon changes its name to Nexttel

Media reports have been making rounds in Cameroon on August 7 about the start of operations of Viettel Cameroon, the third mobile operator in the country, as is the case for over a year.

Only the daily “Le Jour” published the same report, but announcing the new name: "Nexttel."

Reliable sources informed us that the third mobile operator in Cameroon has decided to change its name, for reasons that have not been given yet, dropping its original name: Viettel Cameroon.

According to our sources, the information on this name change has also been notified for several weeks to the Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ART).

However, we learned that the officials of the company now called Nexttel fear a refusal of Cameroonian telecoms regulator to endorse this new name, for fear of creating confusion, since we learned that in Argentina, there is already a telecoms operator called Nexttel which, so far, has no ownership interest in the company ever known under the name of Viettel Cameroon.

As a reminder, Viettel Cameroon, a subsidiary of the Vietnamese telecoms operator, which partnered Cameroonian billionaire Baba Danpoulo, holds the third mobile license in Cameroon since 2012, with the added bonus of an exclusive exploitation of 3G technology over a period of 2 years.

But since then, for reasons of delay in the construction of its network, the company has postponed twice the launch of start of its operations, now scheduled for September 18, 2014.

In the meantime, the internal rumours of the company’s installation process is mostly fueled by shareholders disputes (officially settled today); accusations of massive importation of workers from Vietnam, at the expense of 6300 local jobs they have promised to the Cameroonian government at the signing of the concession contract; stern social climate between Cameroon and Vietnamese employees within the company .