According to a Dow Jones report, Bharti Airtel, Monaco Telecom, owned by Cable & Wireless, and Vietnam's Vietel are in talks with Cameroon's telecommunications ministry to obtain the country's third mobile license.

The new operator will compete with MTN Cameroon and Orange Cameroon. According to the ITU, by year-end 2010, Cameroon had 8.64 million mobile subscribers, equating to a penetration rate of 44.1%.

"We're already at the final phase of the negotiations and anytime from now," Cameroon's Telecommunications Minister Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam said.

"The negotiations are on and we want that whoever of the bidders to be chosen has to invest and be able to withstand the weight of the already existing operators," said Minister Essam.

The government launched a tender for the third mobile license in May, a decade after MTN and Orange acquired mobile licenses.

Intelecon comment: By licensing a third mobile operator, the government of Cameroon is taking a significant step in the development of the country's telecommunications sector. In a 2008 paper, "Econometric Evidence on the Impacts of Privatization, New Entry, and Independent Industry Regulator on Mobile Network Penetration and Expansion", Yan Li analyzed 1991-2006 mobile market data from 29 OECD countries and China. Li found that, "the third-to-fifth entries are jointly associated with the highest penetration (the effects start to decline after the fifth entry), and the third entry is also associated with the fastest network expansion."