The N’Djamena High Court has rejected a complaint filed against cellcos Airtel and Tigo over bandwidth throttling, Agence Ecofin reports. The case was filed by a group of Chadian lawyers, who have stated that they will now appeal the decision. Neither operator has denied restricting internet access, but explained that they had ben directed to do so by the government. Indeed, a representative from the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Post (L’Autorite de Regulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes, ARCEP) told the court that the regulator had issued the instruction following an order from the Ministry of Public Security.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, internet access in Chad has been throttled since late March 2018 according to French NGO Internet Without Borders (Internet Sans Frontieres, ISF), which claimed in a joint statement to the UN Human Rights Council the following month that Chad had ‘mastered the practice of shutting down telecommunications for political reasons’. ISF’s submission stated that bandwidth throttling was ‘making it extremely difficult for Chadian citizens to connect to social media and messaging apps without the use of a VPN.’