Francis Wangusi, the director general of the Communications Authority of Kenya. PHOTO | FILE
By OKUTTAH MARK, mokuttah@ke.nationmedia.com
In Summary
- The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) board sets 0.2 per cent of the annual gross turnover as the penalty for poor telecom services.
- At 0.2 per cent of annual gross turnover, the new fine could result in penalties running into tens of millions of shillings for the telecoms operators.
- The current fine, which stands at a flat rate of Sh500,000, has failed to give operators the incentive to comply with established quality of service (QoS) standards.
The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) board has
set 0.2 per cent of the annual gross turnover as the penalty for
telecommunication firms that offer substandard services, setting the
companies up for heavier fines.
Francis Wangusi, the CA director-general, said Monday the
new penalty will be effective in July next year and will also see data
or internet providers subjected to the new penalties.
The current fine stands at a flat rate of Sh500,000
which Mr Wangusi reckons is too lenient and has failed to give
operators the incentive to comply with established quality of service
(QoS) standards.
“We have made the penalties on the breach of QoS
stiffer as a way of motivating the operators decide either to pay 0.2
per cent of their annual gross turnover to the authority or to plough
back the money and improve their network quality,” Mr Wangusi said.
At 0.2 per cent of annual gross turnover, the new
fine could result in penalties running into tens of millions of
shillings for the telecoms operators.
Safaricom,
which recorded sales of Sh164.4 billion in the year ended March, would
for example be liable to a fine of up to Sh328 million if it were to be
penalised.
The other main mobile phone companies, Airtel and
Orange, do not disclose their annual turnover figures but these are also
in the billions of shillings.
Mr Wangusi said the regulator has enhanced its
measuring mechanism by upgrading its quality of service monitoring
system from the initial Q-Voice system to the more modern MTP4 Tems
Discovery version.
“This system is in line with global ICT standards
and provides an all-inclusive framework that measures the quality of
voice, data and SMS services,” he added.
The CA requires the operators to achieve a score of
80 per cent on eight indicators, including speech quality, completed
calls, call success rate and drop rate.
None of the three mobile phone operators – Safaricom, Airtel and Orange – met the threshold in the year to June last year.
The stiffer penalties come at a time when the
regulator is in the process of recruiting independent external
contractors to carry out simultaneous assessment of quality of service
countrywide.
The CA said 14 firms have expressed interest in the
tender to conduct the quality of service survey, and the regulator is
in the process of selecting the winner.
The regulator has previously conducted the survey
independently on an annual basis, but the quality tests will be done by a
private firm quarterly under the new regime
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