The Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ART) in Cameroon has just made public a decision signed on 9 September 2016, on “the withdrawal of 400,000 telephone numbers formerly allocated” to the Cameroonian subsidiary of French telecom group Orange.

This decision from the regulatory body in the telecom sector, which thus grants positive feedback to a request made by Orange Cameroun by correspondence dated 6 June 2016, should enable the number 2 in the mobile telephone market in the country to save starting from next year.

Indeed, we learned from authorised sources, Orange Cameroun’s request, through which the company wished to “return” to the regulatory body “some groups of numbers” allocated to the company, is part of a cost-cutting policy in the company.

As, we learned, mobile operators operating in the country pay according to the regulations the sum of FCfa 180 per year to the regulatory body, for every telephone number allocated to them. Based on this calculation, by returning 400,000 numbers to ART, Orange Cameroun should save about FCfa 72 million starting from 2017.

According to our sources, the groups of numbers which will thus be returned are part of the 700,000 numbers requested by Orange Cameroun in 2012. They were indeed allocated by the regulatory body, as part of the agreement between the Cameroonian subsidiary of the Orange group and Set Mobile, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) launched at the time by Cameroonian footballer Samuel Eto’o.

The challenges which Set Mobile faced, management difficulties which led this MVNO to close shop after a few years; however did not enable its partner to profit from most of the 700,000 numbers made available at the time by ART. Hence the decision from Orange Cameroun to return them to the regulatory body.

For this telecom operator, it is not only about getting rid of the expenditure linked to the presence of these numbers in its portfolio, but also to enable ART to reallocate them to other potential companies.