In Cameroon, since April 24, 2023, consumers have put their mobile phones on airplane mode every day, between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., in protest. The objective is to encourage operators to lower the costs charged and improve the quality of services.
With our correspondent in Yaoundé, Polycarp Essomba
After the Ivory Coast or Burkina Faso in West Africa, the boycott of telephone companies is also reaching Cameroon. Since April 24, 2023, consumers of the products of these companies have been observing a symbolic strike, by activating the airplane mode of their phones, between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.
A mode during which the phone cannot make or receive a call, let alone connect to any internet network. Objectives: to lower the costs applied to customers and improve the quality of services.
Thus, Joseph, a young entrepreneur based in Yaoundé, was quick to join the movement: “ It is a movement that has been launched. Of course, I do not know the impact that it can have, but I agree first. I am therefore in airplane mode between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. »
” We will continue to keep the pressure on »
The act is not insignificant or fanciful, it expresses here for thousands of other Cameroonians a certain exasperation with the costs and the quality of the services offered by the mobile telephone companies, as explained by Doctor David Eboutou, initiator of this boycott. ” Through the airplane mode movement, we generally denounce the high cost of services, that is to say the extremely high cost of data, telephone charges which are from any point of view surreal, the poor quality of services, the virtual non-existence of an operational after-sales service “, he launches.
Echoing this strike, the government brought together on April 27, 2023 for a working session all the mobile telephone operators and the regulatory body for the sector. But for David Eboutou, the call for a strike can only be lifted on the basis of the appreciation by each consumer of a significant improvement in the quality of services and the reduction in costs in his telephone: “ We will continue to maintain the pressure and wait to feel the results in the phones, beyond the consultations that are announced here and there. Only the consumer is waiting to see change from their phone. »