12 December 2024

The Mauritanian Regulatory Authority (ARE) has applied financial and administrative sanctions against Mattel, Mauritel and Chinguitel for ‘failures observed in certain cities, localities, roads and agglomerations.’

Mauritel was fined 313.2 million ouguiyas and reduced the duration of its current 2G license by one month. Mattel was fined 127.03 million ouguiyas and reduced the duration of its current 2G license by two months. Chinguitel will have to pay 100.2 million ouguiyas to the public treasury. The durations of its current 2G, 3G and 4G licenses were also reduced by three, one and two months respectively.

This decision by the ARE follows a quality control mission for electronic communications services carried out from 23 September. The telecoms regulator wanted to verify whether the operators had improved their respective levels of compliance compared to the results of a first control mission carried out from 18 December 2023 to 24 January 2024.

The ARE expects the sanctions imposed to permanently ensure levels of quality in accordance with international standards, in accordance with their contractual commitments. Mattel and Mauritel have already announced programs to expand and modernize their respective networks, which should result in an improvement in the quality of service (QoS). Mauritel said that it had invested 14 billion old ouguiyas.