CA puts Telkom, Airtel on notice over call quality

The Communications Authority of Kenya head office in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

By JOHN MUTUA
More by this Author

Summary

• The communications regulator has placed two mobile operators under watch for violating quality of telecoms services on their networks
• The Communications Authority(CA) said Airtel and Telkom Kenya failed to meet the minimum 80 per cent threshold on quality of calls across 33 counties in the year ended June 2020.
• Telkom Kenya scored an average mark of 73 per cent while Airtel had 52 per cent in the survey conducted last year.

The communications regulator has placed two mobile operators under watch for violating quality of telecoms services on their networks

The Communications Authority (CA) said Airtel and Telkom Kenya failed to meet the minimum 80 per cent threshold on quality of calls across 33 counties in the year ended June 2020.

Telkom Kenya scored an average mark of 73 per cent while Airtel had 52 per cent in the survey conducted last year.

Safaricom scored an overall mark of 92 percent in the survey.

CA has put the two telcos on notice saying that it will check if they improve the quality of calls this year.

“As Airtel’s and Telkom’s performance did not meet the set target of 80 percent for voice services they were issued notices of non–compliance that require the firms to improve their quality of services in the country in compliance with the set threshold,” CA said in the report.

“The Authority is evaluating their performance again in the 2020/2021 assessments for confirmation of compliance to the requested improvement.”

Telcos breaching requirements on quality of calls and other service outages as a result of omission on their part risk a fine of up to 0.2 per cent of their revenues, which could run into hundreds of millions.

The survey shows that Airtel subscribers in Kajiado, Kiambu and Narok experienced the highest outages and disruptions when making calls as the telco scored 20 percent in the three counties while in Makueni, it scored 40 percent.

Airtel scored lowest (20 percent) in Kwale, Laikipia, Nyandarua, Murang’a, Kirinyaga and Nandi and highest (100 per cent) in Kisumu.

Mobile subscribers in Kisumu were the best served with the three telcos scoring 100 percent.

The dismal scores for the two telcos comes at a time they dropped their merger plan citing unacceptable conditions placed on the proposed amalgamation besides delays in receiving regulatory approvals.