Opinions of Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Auteur: CRTV

4G telephone services in Cameroon: hoax or reality?

Christmas celebrations are gathering steam resulting in heavy traffic jam on the streets, in supermarkets and even on telephone and internet networks.

Despite the difficulty to fluently communicate through a telephone call, short message or the internet, mobile telephone service providers are currently carrying out aggressive publicity of their switch over from the third generation, 3G technology to 4G.

Barely eight months after the switch over from 2G to 3G, have giant billboards been installed on the streets on the nation’s capital to announce the switch over to 4G.

Most local consumers who are yet to master most the advantages of 3G are yet to feel the impact of the change as telephone lines are regularly congested especially as end of year feasts enter high gear.

Experts in telephone services explain that the change in service quality from 3G to 4G is not automatics as the companies have to upgrade their equipment and it may take some time.

Officials of the Telecommunications Regulatory Board have not commented on the announced switch over but affirm that the companies were issued the licence to provide 3G and 4G telephone services in Cameroon since April 2015.

The telephone companies, on the one hand, are upgrading the services while the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications continues to expand the coverage of the optical fibre network throughout the country and consumers are expecting a visible change in the quality of calls, internet speed and reliability in Cameroon’s telecommunications platform.

As at now the perturbations on all the networks is a cause for concern for users as the telephone which was supposed to make communication faster and easier turns out otherwise and leaves doubts if season’s greetings extended to loved loves through the telephone are actually received at the right time.