Togo: Telecom Regulator Record Revenue Boost Following Strategic Reforms
Friday, 14 July 2023 17:24 
(Togo First) - Togo’s Telecom Watchdog, the ARCEP, earned the State CFA4 billion in 2022, up from 3.94 billion in 2021. This is according to the latest official data.
The regulator has, since 2020 and under the leadership of Michel Yaovi Galley, launched several sanction procedures that yielded three warnings and three major fines.
The operators most affected by the sanctions were Togo Cellulaire, Moov Africa, and Vivendi Africa Group (GVA Togo), which markets Canal Box’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) internet offers.
Togo Cellulaire received two fines totaling 3.4 billion FCFA, one in February 2021 and another in June 2022, for intra and extra-network price differentiation and for serious breaches of the obligation to ensure continuous availability of mobile electronic communication services.
Moov Africa Togo was also fined nearly 594 million FCFA in May 2021 for non-compliance with the service availability obligation.
As for GVA, it received a warning for serious and recurring service availability failures, a procedure whose conclusions have not yet been made public.
The ARCEP’s ongoing reforms aim to simplify its regime of royalties, which are another source of income of the regulator. The Council of Ministers adopted a draft decree to this effect on April 5, 2023. While details of this decree are yet to be known, it should facilitate the ARCEP's operations.
The revenue growth recorded last year aligns with the government’s efforts to make Togo a digital hub, in line with its "Togo Digital 2025" vision. In August 2022, the Minister of Digital Economy, Cina Lawson, indeed signed a decree setting sixteen quality indicators to be respected by the operators. Complying with these indicators should, in the long run, help improve both user experience and ARCEP's revenues, and consequently the State’s.
Fiacre E. Kakpo
