Cameroon: Vodafone network crash leaves customers without connectivity

After close to a year of uninterrupted service, clients of the internet service provider (ISP) Vodafone Cameroun, who entered the LTE market in 2016, are experiencing their first major disturbances on the network since the end of last week.

Indeed, on Friday 8 September 2017, it was impossible to connect to the Vodafone network throughout the day. “Dear client, internet service is temporarily suspended due to disturbances on the network. The technical team is working to restore the connection. Thank you for your patience”, the operator informed its clients via SMS at the end of the day. 

On the following day, 9 September 2017, Vodafone Cameroun came back to announce to its clients the resumption of the connection in in the city of Douala, the economic capital of the country; the city of Yaoundé rather stayed disconnected from the network until the end of the evening.

After a break of a day and a half, disturbances restarted in the evening of 11 September, preventing thousands of clients, who rushed to this operator at the start of its activities, from accessing internet for some hours.

If some telecoms experts see these disturbances as a too quick saturation of the network, due to the success of Vodafone services since the start of its activities; others rather see them as inconveniences caused by operations to extend the service of this operator to another eight Cameroonian cities.

Indeed, after restricting its activities to only Yaoundé and Douala, for close to a year, this ISP announced, at the end of August this year, that its network is now operational in eight new cities in Cameroon. These are Bafoussam (Western region), Bamenda (North-West), Buéa, Kumba, Mutengene, Limbé (South-West), Edéa (Littoral) and Kribi (South). 

BRM