BMI’s West and Central Africa report covers a broad range of telecoms markets. Central Africa sees some of the most extreme examples, ranging from Gabon, a well-developed but small mobile market, just waiting for operators to start fully exploiting the potential of value-added services, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has massive growth potential thanks to a large population and a penetration rate that is under 20%. Most of the West African markets have between three and four active mobile operators, and penetration rates of between 30% and 55%. Probably the most exciting developments since the last update of this report have been in Senegal and Cameroon. January saw the launch of Senegal’s third national mobile operator, and now that we have the new operator’s Q109 results, it has been added to our market statistics. Expresso, as the new network has been branded, is owned by Sudan incumbent Sudatel, which already has a network in nearby Mauritania. As well as the third network operator, Senegal has joined Cameroon as one of the few African markets to have an MVNO. BMI maintains that this development is somewhat premature in both markets, but will probably do no harm, and could increase competition to some degree. In Cameroon, news has been focused on the internet market and network development. Due to an ongoing dispute between the incumbent Camtel and MTN Cameroon, work has been suspended on a new fibreoptic backbone project. At the same time, new internet service providers are hailing increased competition in the internet market for bringing prices down. The west coast of Africa, while already served by the SAT-3 international submarine cable, is still waiting to benefit from new submarine projects that should help to alleviate congestion and bring more affordable broadband services to some areas. The GLO-1 cable is expected to launch before the end of the year, while the WACS cable may take a little longer.