CCK offers Safaricom reprieve in voice test row

Communications Commission of Kenya headquarters in Nairobi. FILE 

By MARK OKUTTAH

In Summary

• The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has agreed to run a fresh quality check on Safaricom ahead of the June licence renewal date.
• The commission found that all the four mobile phone operators — Safaricom, Airtel, Orange and Yu — failed to meet minimum quality of service standards in the year to June.

The communications regulator on Monday offered Safaricom a reprieve from using the voice quality tests, which showed the operator was non-compliant, to determine the renewal of its licence next year.

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has agreed to run a fresh quality check on Safaricom ahead of the June licence renewal date.

The commission found that all the four mobile phone operators — Safaricom, Airtel, Orange and Yu — failed to meet minimum quality of service standards in the year to June, but Safaricom has questioned its accuracy.

“There is room to do another QoS (quality of service) assessment study between now and the time Safaricom’s licence comes for renewal, however this can only be done if Safaricom itself makes such a request,” said Francis Wangusi, CCK director general in an interview with the Business Daily.

“In the event that we don’t hear from them we will presume that they are okay with our report or have not improved on any of the parameters we found wanting and as such we will proceed and use the pasts QoS reports in the evaluation of the suitability of renewing Safaricom’s licence,” added Mr Wangusi.

Safaricom must first pay $27 million (Sh2.34 billion) and meet the quality standards for the initial licence to be renewed for a 10-year term ending in 2024. The inaugural permit was issued in July 1999 for a term of 15 years at a fee of $55 million (Sh4.75 billion).

READ: CCK asks Safaricom to pay Sh2.3b for licence renewal

The new licensing round will earn CCK Sh4.6 billion over the next 18 months given that Airtel will be expected to pay the Sh2.3 billion — which yu paid as Kenya’s fourth operator in 2003 — by June 2015.

But Safaricom has questioned the veracity of CCK’s quality measures that show the Nairobi bourse operator has failed to meet the regulatory requirements.

The CCK expects the operator to achieve a score of 80 per cent on the eight indicators including speech quality, completed calls, call success rates and call drop rate.

Safaricom, Airtel and yuMobile tied on a score of 50 per cent in the year to June while Telkom Kenya had a 62.5 per cent rating. Safaricom had failed to meet the quality standards over the past four years, the CCK says.

But the operator reckons that an independent assessor had given it a score of 87.5 per cent. “Mini assessments are conducted where a licensee gives short term commitments to rectify an omission,” says Mr Wangusi.

Safaricom has laid own inland fibre optic cable, upgraded most of its sites to 3G and is pushing CCK to award it additional frequencies to rollout 4G network in efforts to up its voice quality.

This comes as the State raised penalties for operators in breach of quality standards to 0.2 per cent of the annual sales from a flat rate of Sh500, 000 —taking Safaricom’s fine to Sh250 million on last year’s revenues of Sh124 billion.