Kenya’s Information and Communication minister Samuel Poghisio revealed that the government is in the process of amending the country’s Communications Act, which will see harsher penalties issued to mobile service providers if they fail to deliver the best quality of service.
“We are going to be more strict with the operators who are not meeting the standards,” he said. It was also revealed that the Communication Commission of Kenya (CKK) currently imposes a fine of Sh500,000 for sub-standard service, but that could almost double if the amendment gets approved.
“If they do no not act on improving their services, we plan to amend the Act to provide for stiffer penalties”. According to the latest Quality of Service report from the CCK, not one of the country’s four mobile service operators met the standards on network quality as set out by the CKK.
According to Nairobi’s The Star “the eight performance parameters are completed calls rate, call set up success rate, dropped calls, blocked calls, speech quality, handover success rate, call set up time and signal strength. Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom’s Orange and Essar’s Yu all scored six out of the eight parameters with a warning from CCK that if they persisted in the sub-standard service offering, they would face the penalties.”
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
