After the Pan African Institute for Citizenship, Consumers and Development (CICODEV), the Senegal Association of Users of ICT (ASUTIC) also criticised the introduction of portability of mobile numbers in the country. It judges that the launch of this telephone service was done without the pre-requisite conditions to enable it functioning well being in place. The Association is therefore requesting its suspension.

With portability, ASUTIC explains that telephone numbers remain the same, but subscribers change their network. However, in this incessant transfer of subscribers from one operator to the other, there is no audio signal to indicate on which network the call will be emitted by a user considering that the person they are speaking to could have also switched operators. This situation prevents users from knowing beforehand the applicable tariffs for a call.

ASUTIC indicates that Orange even took advantage of this gap to increase its national communication tariff two days before the official launch of portability. A notice to the clients was published in this regard by the newspaper “Le Soleil” on 27^th August 2015.

All mobile telephone users in Senegal have been asked by ASUTIC to stop using the portability service as long as the problems surrounding it have not been solved.