On April 22, telecommunications operators MTN and Orange in Côte d'Ivoire announced the return of their old mobile internet offerings. A decision that follows the revolt triggered by the setting of a new price floor that led to the granting of less 4G credit at the same price. From April 11th, Moov Africa Côte ivory (subsidiary of Maroc Telecom) had restored its old offerings.
Strong consumer dissatisfaction forced the government to intervene and suspend the application of the new tariffs on April 10. Talks began in mid-April between the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Côte d'Ivoire (ARTCI) and the country's three operators. The latter, who feared that the situation would drag on due to technical constraints, ended up reaching an agreement.
Return of consultations
It is recalled that ARTCI, which is currently seeking to rebalance a telecommunications market that it considers to be weakened by the loss of voice revenue, decided on January 12th and after consultation with a year, reduce the official minimum price in 20% to 0.8 CFA francs from April 6th. Paradoxically, this decision had the effect of increasing prices, with operators applying an unofficial minimum price since 2020, situated below this threshold.
Since April 20, a new round of consultations was initiated by ARTCI with the aim of enforcing its decision which included other measures, namely the postponement of unused data and the increase in bonuses from 100 to 200%.
In their respective press releases, Orange and MTN do not specify whether they will keep these devices. Moov Africa Côte d'Ivoire, in turn, chose to maintain the postponement to do data.
