In Cameroon, mobile subscribers’ patience has once again run out. On Friday, 30 October 2026, some of them boycotted MTN Cameroon and Orange Cameroun to protest against unreliable internet, dropped calls and data bundles that evaporate before they can be used. The real scale of the movement remains hard to gauge, as the specialist outlet ITWeb Africa said it had been unable to verify it independently.
The initiative was born on social media. Several content creators, including Céleste Victorien, urged customers of both operators to stop using their services for a day and switch to Camtel, the state-owned operator, until their demands on prices and connection quality are heard.
The cost of data is at the heart of the anger. According to figures from Cable.co.uk, one gigabyte of mobile data costs an average of 956 CFA francs in Cameroon, compared with 229 in Nigeria, 235 in Ghana and 117 in France. Measured against income, the gap widens further: a gigabyte accounts for 1.14% of the benchmark indicator in Cameroon, against 0.31% in neighbouring Nigeria.
On top of the high prices comes a sense of opacity. Some users say a 4 GB bundle valid for thirty days disappeared in under half an hour, with no explanation they could find. Such accounts fuel what has now become a central demand: knowing exactly how data usage is counted.
The structure of the market also draws criticism. MTN claims more than 53% market share, and the sector remains dominated by the two foreign groups. On the eve of the boycott, another slogan spread online: “Nexttel, come back.” Launched in 2014, the operator went off air in March 2023 after a long dispute between its Vietnamese shareholder Viettel and its local partner Bestinver. For many, its disappearance symbolises the loss of competition that once benefited consumers.
The discontent is nothing new. In April 2023, the “flight mode” campaign saw thousands of subscribers switch off their phones every day between noon and 2 p.m. In July 2025, the regulator fined MTN and Orange a total of 2.6 billion CFA francs for failing to meet their coverage and service-quality obligations. It went on to scrutinise MTN’s investments in July 2026, followed by Orange’s on 22 and 23 October.
The frustration has also reached the political arena. MP Nouran Fouting recently challenged both operators over the burden these failures place on households and small businesses, for whom connectivity has become an unavoidable expense and an essential working tool. The question now is whether this latest warning shot will achieve more than the previous ones, or whether subscribers will once again have to settle for promises.