Data vanishing, patience gone: Cameroon’s digital frustration hits boiling point 🇨🇲📵

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Unstable connections, disappearing data bundles, overpriced bills, unreachable customer service… For months now, Cameroonian users have been running out of patience. Complaints targeting Orange, MTN, and Camtel are piling up — and none of the operators seem to have answers.

Since the October 12 presidential election, reports of suspicious slowdowns and widespread outages have surged. What was once an occasional inconvenience has now morphed into a national sense of digital suffocation — and powerlessness.

No one’s sparing the telecoms anymore 📉

In taxis, offices, cybercafés, and WhatsApp groups, one sentence keeps echoing: “Internet doesn’t work.” Every neighborhood has the same complaint. What used to be a technical glitch now feels systemic. Users say their data vanishes in hours, even with minimal browsing. Others describe “ghost networks” — full signal bars, but no webpage loading.

“You recharge 2,000 CFA, and the network lasts barely two hours. Then it’s gone, like you imagined it. We’re in 2025 with internet from 2001. We pay, we suffer, and nobody answers,” says Ulrich, a student in Maroua.

Entrepreneurs in coworking spaces say they’ve had to postpone international meetings because video calls simply won’t connect. Freelancers admit they now work at night — “because it’s the only time the network isn’t catastrophic.”

“It’s absurd and humiliating. We’re losing money, and nobody seems to care. We’re working like it’s still 1998.”

A feeling of total impunity 🚨

The most common grievance: data that disappears at lightning speed. Weekly bundles that should last seven days are reportedly gone within hours of basic professional use. What enrages subscribers isn’t just the outage — it’s the lack of accountability. Payments are processed just fine, but the service never matches the bill.

“They raise prices and lower quality. It’s organized theft,” says Guy, a mobile reseller.

Adding to the frustration, there’s almost zero communication from operators. No official apologies, no technical explanations. At best, users receive a vague text after 48 hours of downtime about “temporary disruptions.”

“Customer service? They paste the same message: ‘Please restart your phone and wait a few hours.’ We’ve been restarting and waiting for three years,” laughs Yasmine, a communications intern.

Suspicious slowdowns since the election 🗳️

Reports of throttling have multiplied since the October 12 election. Users say the network slows down most during live streams, TikTok debates, or viral Facebook and WhatsApp posts.

“The moment a live starts to go viral, the internet just dies. Every time. Then they say it’s a fiber cut in Congo, or a shark biting cables. We’re tired of these urban legends,” says Junior, a motion designer.

There’s no official evidence of deliberate regulation, but the doubt is there — and in a country with already fragile digital trust, that’s enough to create a nationwide anxiety.

Cybersecurity experts point to two possibilities: a massive overload due to sudden traffic spikes, or informal content throttling to slow viral posts. The government has yet to comment. The opacity fuels speculation — and speculation breeds distrust.

A digital economy stuck in buffering 💼

It’s no longer just influencers complaining — the entire digital ecosystem is suffering. Startups, fintech companies, media outlets, delivery workers, online sellers, freelancers — everyone is feeling the drag.

Online courses keep freezing. Consulting firms miss deadlines. E-commerce platforms lose customers mid-payment. Even media outlets are forced to record videos offline.

“We’re told to ‘digitalize Cameroon,’ but the network keeps cutting our legs off. Even checking your bank account feels like a battle. And yet, we still pay on time,” says a local business executive.

Accountants say they’ve gone back to USB drives for urgent document transfers. Real estate agents lose international clients because they can’t maintain calls. Anything requiring speed — sending large files, hosting live sessions — has become a daily struggle.

Meanwhile, telecoms are still flooding social media with glossy ads about 5G, “premium bundles,” and “pro passes” — campaigns that feel entirely disconnected from users’ realities.

A silent — but explosive — crisis 💣

What’s most shocking is the silence. Operators refuse to acknowledge the crisis. The national regulator, ART, hasn’t released any public audit. Yet the bills keep arriving right on time.

“They act like they know we have no alternative. So they do whatever they want. We just need a new competitor we can all afford — and then they’ll see,” says one subscriber.

The permanent outage has become a normalized dysfunction, almost institutionalized. And if nothing changes soon, the anger brewing online may spill into the streets — or worse, into a loss of faith in Cameroon’s digital future itself. Because a state can survive power cuts… but not a collapse of trust.

👉🏾 So what about you — does your connection also fail just when you need it most? What’s your day-to-day experience with the internet in Cameroon?